Redefine What's Possible
As I mentioned last week, this month I’m focusing on confidence.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it and what I could share about what I’ve learned from growing out of my shell and stepping out as an entrepreneur. And I realized that there are few places to start looking when you feel like you don’t have enough confidence.
Continue reading “3 Building Blocks of Confidence”
This Saturday my husband, Dan, and I took a trapeze lesson. It was 1.5 hours of physical and mental challenge. And a whole lot of fun.
It was also educational. I learned a lot about myself, what I’m capable of, and about the unnecessary (and often unreasonable) limits I place on myself (I’m guessing you might do this too). So today I’m sharing some of what I learned.
When you’re at the bottom of the 30-foot ladder looking up, it feels impossible that you’ll make it all the way to the top. Whether your 30-foot ladder is actually a ladder or it’s a book you haven’t started writing yet or a new business you want to start or the decluttering project you keep putting off, when you are looking at the whole thing from really close up, it’s going to look impossible.
The only thing to do really is to take a deep breath and climb. One rung at a time. (And keeping your eyes on only the next 1-2 rungs of the ladder, nothing more).
When I made it to the top of that 30-foot ladder and climbed onto the platform, I was relieved to be safe again. That is, until I realized that I was now standing on a tiny platform 30-feet in the air and my best hope for getting back to the ground was to jump.
There comes a time in life (or business or with a project) when things get scary. Looking forward you see that the only thing to do is the scariest option available (give a speech, sign a contract, start hustling,… whatever). And you’ll look behind you and wonder if maybe you wouldn’t be happier to climb back down the ladder. Or just stay there on the platform forever.
But if you want to LIVE, if you want success, if you really want that dream to come true, you have to jump. It’s called facing your fears, and living courageously. The best things in life often come with scary parts, but getting through those things are a big part of what makes it worth it in the end.
Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and surrender to the great unknown.
When Dan and I arrived for our lesson, I was worried that I would not be able to do it. I had had one trapeze lesson before seven years ago, but that was when I was 30 pounds lighter and rock climbing several times a week.
And so in my mind, I didn’t think I’d be strong enough physically to actually get my legs onto the bar as they instructed us to do (especially when I could barely do it with the assistance of the instructor when we were practicing on the ground).
But the thing is, when you’re swinging through the air, physics take over. And my body took over. I didn’t have time to think about what I could and couldn’t do. When the instructions were yelled at me, I just did it. And while I won’t say that it was easy, I will say that it was easier than I thought it would be.
So when you are talking yourself out of something because you think it’s too hard or you can’t do it, take the first step. You may be surprised to find it’s not as hard as you think it is.
Bonus: Courage is an action.
For me, every step of the process on Saturday took courage, from climbing the ladder to jumping off of the platform to letting go of the trapeze bar to fall onto the net. There were so many moments when all I could do was take a deep breath and then respond to what was being asked of me.
A lot of things in life are like that too. Courage isn’t a shield that protects you from fear, and it’s not something you put on before you start.
Courage is something you do, it’s the action you take. (Click here to tweet that).
And life, like crazy trapeze lessons, takes courage.
Welcome to February. Last month I chose the word courage as my theme and intention, and with courage I learned some things from Sandy (as in Grease), posted my first video, and found my own remedy for a vulnerability hangover.
So now we’re already into the month of February and my new word is: love. I know, kind of obvious for February, right? Yes, and there’s some real juicy stuff when you look deeper into love.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~ Lao Tzu
And in the spirit of L-O-V-E, I’ll be bringing you a few conversations with a few people I know who are bringing more love into the world. The first one is with Carly Butler of Life’s Letter and you can read our conversation below.
Also in the spirit of L-O-V-E, I’ve pledged my birthday (which is this month) to charity:water to bring clean water to people who don’t have it. If you want to help me reach my goal of $1000 (please please), Go Here >>
Note: You’ll find buttons for crazy numbers like $39 and $390 (cause they think I’m turning 39 or something, as if… well, ok. I am. shh, don’t tell)… but you can donate like $5 or whatever, just click the “another amount” button).
Have you heard of a “vulnerability hangover”? I first heard the phrase from Brené Brown (whose books, by the way, are AWESOME & don’t even get me started on her Ted talk. Love.). Then this week I got a newsletter from Jennifer Lee (of The Right Brain Business Plan) in which she fessed up to having one recently.
What is a vulnerability hangover? A vulnerability hangover is that “what was I thinking” kind of feeling that happens after you put yourself out there in a real (genuine) way… aka when you expose yourself.
Like when you find the courage to push past your gremlins and do that thing that scares-but-excites you, you’re left with your guard down and your gremlins come back with a vengeance to point out all the little things that could’ve been better, that you did completely wrong, and that you shouldn’t have said in the first place.
Yeah, that.
Today I realized that’s what I’ve been feeling since I posted my video last week. And that’s why I’ve had such a hard time writing since that post.
But you know what? I’m still here. I had some nice comments about my video. And my mission is still the same as it was before I posted that video: to create space for people (you & me) to live our possibilities in life (by making gremlins back off & other more fun stuff).
And to do that, I’m going to have to do more things that scare me which often includes staying the course.
Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary. ~ Brené Brown in The Gifts of Imperfection
One thing I noticed during that vulnerability hangover is that I kept looking for an “easy” topic to write about. As in something that’s less real for me at the moment… something I can talk about but not really connect to directly. (does that make sense?)
In other words, something that doesn’t require me to be vulnerable.
But you know what? To live fully, to love completely, to really connect to people, to make dreams come true… it all requires being vulnerable in some way. Being vulnerable takes courage.
Courage is like a multivitamin. You need a dose everyday. ← Tweet this, y’all!
Turns out my remedy for a vulnerability hangover is a little bit of the hair of the dog… so here I am putting myself out there again.
Well, I’ve gone and done it. I made a video. It took a bit of courage to start recording and a bit more to upload it to Youtube. AND EVEN MORE to post it here today.
If you’d like help kicking your gremlins to the curb, check out Good Girl Rehab.
Photo Credit: Marloes de Vries (via Pinterest)
Remember in Grease how Sandy is at the beginning of the movie? She is the quintessential good girl. She’s a nice girl. She doesn’t quite get it when people are sarcastic or being mean. How could she? She’s nice to everyone and expects that everyone else would be nice too.
Growing up in the South and having an Asian mom, I got a double lesson in nice. I was so nice, it could’ve been my middle name. So I really related to Sandy and loved Grease when I was a kid. In my mind, I was a half-Korean Sandy Olsson.
As a kid (and teenager), I learned that “being nice” and being a “good girl” were the easy way to keep the status quo, please other people, and, in a lot of ways, to hide. But like Sandy, I wasn’t fooling anyone.
Continue reading “what I learned about courage from sandy”
This year, I’m choosing a word each month to use as my theme/intention/guide post. When I originally thought of this idea, I thought: January would be a great time to focus on simplifying. Yeah, totally, dude. The January word is totally: simplicity. Rad.
But now that I’ve recovered from my surfer-dude speech impediment, I realize that’s not my word this month. In fact, Wednesday’s post about being scared and doing it anyway has inspired the word for this month.
And that word is… drumroll, please… Courage.
Photo: the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz gets his medal of courage
Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got? (~ The Cowardly Lion)
Darn tootin.
And just like the lion, we have all the courage we need already. So consider this your virtual Courage Medal.
“Read what my medal says: “Courage”. Ain’t it the truth? Ain’t it the truth? ” ~ The Lion
So that’s what you can expect from me this month: courage.
Continue reading “courage”
As I mentioned in my new year’s post, I’m changing the direction of this blog. Expanding beyond food and writing about things that are important to me now (things like: hey! I’ve become a certified a life coach and a stepmom and have a whole new relationship to food and health… and you know what? I’ve got some interesting things to say about it!).
And none of this is really new. I’ve been thinking about making these changes for 2 years (just ask my husband, he’s sick of hearing about it). And yet, even after I “outed” myself with that announcement on January 1st, it still took me until today (January 9th, that’s over a week!) to write even one word.
WHY?!
“Write blog post” has been at the top of my ToDo list every day this week, and at the end of the day when I did not write it, I highlighted it in orange. After a couple of days of highlighting my failure and feeling bad about it, I looked deeper.
Continue reading “chicken fried terror”
