Storms: Healthy and Hopeful

The calm before the storm has settled in and we've surrendered to the reality that it's coming. We have an important choice to make now. How will we weather it? The truth is, the only way beyond this storm is through it. Facing the storm and all that it triggers inside of us presents us with opportunities to grow and change. But, what does it look like to move through the storm in health?

Yesterday, I had the privilege of seeing and learning from one of my mentors at a training he was facilitating. Right before I left, he offered this bit of wisdom to the participants: "All transformation begins with personal transformation." I allowed his words to soak in again. I've heard them before and I genuinely need to hear them often because this truth is intricately connected to how we weather life's storms in health.

We will only move forward to the extent that we are willing to look at the unhealthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that exist in our lives in order to address them. Often, storms trigger symptoms of the root beliefs that keep us imprisoned in unhealthy patterns and habits. While many of us may be unaware of the exact triggers, we can begin to notice our behaviors that indicate we're not doing well. For me, I know I'm struggling when I'm...

• ...eating all of the sugar in sight.
• ...peeling my fingernails off (gross, I know!).
• ...having a hard time falling asleep.
• ...starting to become more judgemental towards others and offering less grace.
• ...cleaning my house incessantly.
• ...disconnecting from the people I usually want to spend time with regularly.

And, when two or more of these behaviors are in play, I'm in deep! When I'm able to see this, I have new decisions to make... How will I choose to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing?

Here are some of my personal strategies...

I phone or text or try to grab coffee with a friend. Chances are high that I need relational connection and when I invite a friend to help me process my experience, it typically helps me to gain a greater understanding of the symptoms and my root belief. Plus, it kills isolation and moves me back into community.

Getting out to get some exercise and perspective is another great option for me. Sometimes all it takes to get in touch with my thoughts and feelings is to actively create space to engage them. Being outside is a huge win for me, personally.

The other, more tangible, option to look into the root, is to sit myself down and write out the behavior and consider what I was feeling right before I engaged it. Sometimes, I have to look back over the last few days or the week. Once I identify the feeling or feelings, I look for the thought behind it. I write the thought (or thoughts) out so I can see them in black and white. I ask myself, "Is this true?" It's amazing how many thoughts actually aren't true. Though, often, they have a hint of truth in them which makes them all the easier to believe if I'm not paying attention. I then write the actual truth and practice replacing the old thought with the new thought whenever it comes up.

When I take the time to notice and address my thoughts and feelings, I notice I weather storms very differently. I engage these practices along the way, throughout the stages leading up to the storm, as well. It may feel tiring to consider looking into why we're feeling fear, anxiety, confusion, chaos and the like, but what is the alternative? Allowing these realities to rule us only makes it more difficult to make it through life's storms. But, the truth is, we have to practice and practice requires time and energy. 

Transformation doesn't necessarily happen overnight. Like most experiences in life, it is a process. But, the sooner we say "yes," the sooner we will experience the hardships and challenges in life with more peace and grace. After all, when one storm passes, we can be certain that another will develop on a future horizon—whether soon or distant. While this might be a difficult pill to swallow, we don't have to dread the coming storms. We can view them as gateways into deeper understanding, healing, and hope. We can live with positive expectancy—since we made it through the last storm, we have what it takes to weather this one, as well. And hopefully, we'll do so without befriending the things that steal life from us... 

So...

• How might you practice today? Whether you are in a storm, see one approaching on the horizon or are storm-less... Today is a good day to begin more deeply engaging your transformational process.
• What habits indicate you're in stress? If you're unsure, ask a trusted friend, spouse, colleague, or family member what they've noticed about you. The people in our lives often have incredible insight into our behaviors.
• How will you address your stress habits? Write out three ideas that will help you move out of stress when you notice that you're operating in it.

Need help? I'm always here and happy to come alongside you. Here's to weathering storms in health and hope from today forward!

The Hustle in the Hustle

I see it on coffee mugs and tank tops, memes and social media banners, and I hear friends say it day in and out: "Every day I'm hustlin'..." Our mantra, it seems. I've dialogued with others about this piece of our vocabulary and what it stirs in me for a couple of years now. I haven't known how to talk about it fully, but I've decided to try. This week, I received responses from a few of you on social media as you shared your thoughts on what the hustle means to you. Your perspectives were helpful! Here's what I heard you say about it:

"Doing what you need to do to get to your goal." 

"It is often associated with being opportunistic, having grit, and being responsible for making sure my goal is obtained. It is up to me, so I must do whatever is in my power to get done what needs to get done and persuading others to help me get there."

"Gotta do what I gotta do until I figure something else out."

"Hustle is working for what is good with the goal of what is best!"

"Stepping into what I need to, over and over again."

"The hustle will always be a thing!"

Do these ring true for you? What about the dictionary definitions for hustle? (Posted here.) What sort of a rhythm does the reality of hustle create in your life? If I'm honest, I've found this cultural phenomenon of "The Hustle" to be a difficult pill to swallow. Here's why...

The past 10 years of my story have afforded me a wonderful education in life rhythms. Certain seasons were so filled to the brim that my head was spinning all of the time with all of the doing. Other seasons delivered so much space to me that I'd wonder if I was adding anything meaningful to the world while I sat still, being. 

A worker bee by nature, the "being" was the harder part of the learning for me. I know this isn't true for everyone, but it took great intentionality, and quite a few years, on my part to develop a posture of rest. Workaholism plagued me in my twenties and early thirties. I was seeking to validate my existence to the world through my work. Finding remedy in the affirmations of others and their growing applause of my competence, I pushed myself excessively to continue conquering bigger mountains. And I loved it. I was good at it and even felt "alive" in it.

It's probably not surprising to hear, but I sort-of missed seeing my motive in it all. Of course, there were moments when I could feel that something wasn't right, but I trudged through those with a grittiness I'm amazed to remember I had (it's called adrenaline, by the way). But eventually, when I felt totally misunderstood, under challenged and exhausted—one can't live in fight or flight mode forever, after all—something had to give.

I broke down because quite frankly, I felt totally lost and had used all of my energy trying to prove myself. As I looked deeper, I uncovered a significant root need: to be valued and known and loved. I was trying to find love in all of the wrong places, or so the song goes... This seeing freed me to begin healing and set me on the long road back into genuine life. And healing meant that I had to come to terms with reality. I came to see how I'd been punked. The illusion I thought of as life was actually death and I felt this death profoundly.

For me, this never-ending cycle of hustle and the energy required to keep it up eventually gave out. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. One truth I've learned in this process is that hustle, as much as it is actual activity, is also a mindset. And perhaps this is where I feel confronted by our cultural embrace of the experience. I don't typically hear us saying that it's just activity. I hear us saying that we just have to keep going, no matter what. But there are times when we just have to stop. And, if we don't, there's a good chance we'll be forced to stop by exhaustion, disease, broken relationships—you name it. This is what I mean when I say, "The Hustle in the Hustle." If my mindset is set to hustle, I will always be hustling.

I don't know about you, but I find that this mindset creates a terrible life rhythm. My firsthand experience has helped me to see that when I lived it, I was never really "off" and over time, this harmed me. In the coming weeks, we'll continue to talk about this mindset and look at some alternatives. After all, my hope for myself and for you is that we are people who live a WHOLE life.   

In the meantime: 

• Do you resonate with the hustle? What does it mean to you?
• What is the nature of your current life rhythm?
• What words or feelings might you use to describe it? Why?

Start Small (Your Hang-ups Part 2)

In the midst of processing and writing about my own hang-ups last week, I had a meeting with a friend to connect about life and work. Our normal 75-90 minutes morphed into four and a half hours after one of her colleagues stopped by to say hi. A flood of questions and ideas surrounding my work emerged as we chatted and chatted and chatted some more.

Have you ever experienced one of these "set-ups"—a place in time when an unplanned experience occurs and it's just the right thing at the right moment?

Well, a set-up this was, indeed.

Our conversation took so many twists and turns, but one key item he pointed out to me, a true piece of "seeing" on his part, was how what I'm really, really interested in is helping people. This I know, of course (it is part of my mission statement, after all—ha!), but his sense of it was that I was overly focused on "business-y" tasks. He encouraged me to take my mission deeper by reconsidering how I'm framing my own view and outline of what I'm up to each and every day. Instead of focusing on "business," what would it mean to focus on the people themselves? How might a renewed focus strengthen my objectives? For someone who met me, at that moment in the dialogue, like 30 minutes before, I felt astounded and encouraged by the insight. And, he was right.

Last week, I introduced a list of my hang-ups. In one way or another, I've noticed (again) how a lack of self-confidence, doubt, is at the root of what's hanging me up. I've been living in fear of really, really putting myself "out there." Have you ever felt nervous about letting people see you up close? In my life, allowing people to know me is a big part of where I'm going, but it also means that others may see more of me than I might anticipate or even like. Plus, any mistakes I make along the way are likely to be seen clearly. This fear has resulted in putting myself only half-way into the proverbial arena (who doesn't want to engage a little wisdom from Bréne Brown today?)... But here I was, standing with a near-stranger who was championing me to go all the way in... 

And, when I left their office that day, I made a video and posted it to my Facebook page to talk about our conversation. I recorded it in one take. I didn't concern myself with "perfect." My face was shiny and my hair, frizzy from Orlando summer. The angle wasn't the most flattering and I hoped and prayed that I would make some sense. You know what? It was awesome. It was done. It was out there. It was me, being me in a breakthrough moment that I can look back on and celebrate now.

So here's the question: What does it take to overcome our hang-ups?

Beyond the first step of actually identifying them, our next opportunity is to step out in confidence by doing the thing we might not do if we were allowing the hang-up to rule us. Is it really that easy, you ask? Well, easy it is not because if it were easy, we wouldn't be hung up.

Simple, however, simple it is. Overcoming our hang-ups begins with a decision to change our minds about the things we're struggling with, then we practice. We take action and see how it goes! We may utterly fail. We might do okay. We might win big. Who knows? Well, we will know as we step out and DO.

So...

1. Revisit your answers to last week's questions on your hang-ups.
2. Next, identify one item in your life where you're currently hung up.
3. Write out how you can practice moving through your hang-up. Maybe you need to initiate a conversation with someone. Perhaps you need to complete something on your list—done is good! Or, maybe you, too must create a video and post it somewhere (or take a selfie...). Or, apply for that job opportunity. Or... 
4. Then, go do the thing. See how it goes. 
5. And, tell me about it. I'd love to hear how it went...

If you're not sure of a step you can take, reach out to me. We can come up with an idea together! I'm all about healthy solutions... Let's move forward and LIVE, friends. Let's hang up our hang-ups!