Every morning I wake up and choose to write here, or not.
My story. My choice.
Every day, there are things I have to do over which there is very little choice or none at all. Like breathing. Bodily functions. Eating. Sure, I get to choose where and when and what I eat, but eat I must to stay alive.
Every day, my choices impact my quality of life, and if the science is correct, its duration too.
Which brings me to my thoughts about today – What choices will I make today that create the story I really want to tell about myself and to myself?
What kind of story do I want my life today to be?
A story of joy? A tale of woe?
Boldness untethered? Timidity quivering?
Living large? Playing small?
Signing out loud or silencing my voice?
What if, instead of just operating as if on auto-drive, you chose to get hyper-conscious of being here, right now, present and alive in this moment, writing your story as if it’s the greatest story you will ever have to tell about your life today?
I have been waiting for ‘my one word’ to appear since before the calendar turned over.
This morning, in the stillness that comes before dawn, in the quiet of the dark holding onto the sky, it slipped in as gracefully as the river flowing past.
Fierceness.
My One Word is FIERCENESS.
It is a scary word to me. To embody fierceness I must be not only fearless but strong and supple, committed and convicted of my path.
Fierceness reminds me that it is never too late to choose harmony, not discord. Peace, not war. It’s never too late to have a change of heart. Never too late to forgive. Never too late to let go.
And never too soon to choose Love.
To embody fierceness I must live within the moment allowing love to embrace my fears, whatever they may be.
My one word, “Fierceness” embodies the invitation to let go of fearfulness and stand strong of back, soft of heart, in Love with all humankind, all beings on this planet, sentient and insentient.
Fierceness calls for me to walk as one with this one whole world
Do you have One Word for 2023?
Please feel free to share it in the comments section below. Perhaps your word will inspire someone to hear theirs.
On December 28 I made a commitment to write in my journal every day. Whether one word or a page, I will write with a pen whatever is on my mind.
Last night, after spending the day disrobing the Christmas tree, putting away the season’s finery, and putting the house back in order, followed by an evening binge-watch of a series on my laptop, I realized I had not yet written in my journal.
“It’s too late to do it now,” the critter whispered in my ear. “Save it for tomorrow.”
My commitment to myself saved me.
The inner loving voice of wisdom whispered, “Write this… I deserve to believe in myself. To trust me. To honour my commitments to me. I deserve my self-respect.”
I wrote out the words 3 x — and went on to fill out the page with my thoughts.
It has been a long (long) time since I wrote consistently by hand in my journal. Reawakening the habit requires consistency – and commitment keeping.
Keeping commitments to myself creates a world of difference for me. It ignites feelings of self-respect and love. It creates a sense of honour, like I can depend upon myself to turn up for me.
In fact, I have been doodling away at a novel I began writing last year and haven’t gotten very far – mostly because of self-excuses that let me off the hook of turning up for me.
In my journal, I have drafted the outline for the book along with the first three chapters.
That is progress.
That is turning up for me.
What about you? What commitments to yourself have you not kept, or would like to keep but are putting off or avoiding altogether?
What are the stories you tell yourself about why you haven’t turned up in full living-colour within your own life?
If you have anything on your list, here’s my recommendation:
Don’t think about all the reasons why not. Just Do.
Don’t buy into your own excuses. Just Do
Stop thinking about why you don’t, or why you shouldn’t, or all the other why nots that clatter around your brain. Just Do.
Stop beating yourself up for not doing — Just Do.
And above all, love yourself by turning up for yourself in your hesitation, stalling, confusion, regrets, excuses — and Just Do.
Channeled into an ever-narrowing strip of water, the river runs loud in winter.
Geese huddle on ice islands stretching out from the two bridge buttresses that stand, immovable, in the middle of the river’s flow.
Two squirrels play tag amongst the trees. Unimpeded by leafy greens filling the space between each branch, black puffy tails flicking rapidly, back and forth, back and forth, they chase each other in and out and around tree trunks and branches.
Immersed within the sacred mystery of the world embracing me, I stand in silent wonder to greet the morning light.
In Silent Wonder
Standing at the gateway
great mystery unspent
beckons
time well spent
time frittered away
time wasted
silently drifts
into the shadows
of the past year
spent
of all that was not known
when the bells tolled
their welcoming clarion
to a new year.
Standing at the gateway
great mystery unspent
unfurls
moment
by
moment
leaving all that was spent
in the invisible hands
of time
passing by.
The forecast is Cold. More cold. And cold some more.
The ground lies frozen beneath its snowy blanket. Squirrels huddle in their winter nests. Geese hunker down on frost covered riverbanks. Birds still their raucous song.
The river keeps flowing.
Trees stand silent, naked branches extended into the air like varicose veins creeping across thin, aged skin.
Time keeps passing, its relentless movement oblivious to winter’s harsh winds.
A stranger emails me from Montreal. She’s read my OpEd which was reprinted in the Montreal Gazette. She wants to quote me. “… the knowledge and experience I’ve accrued over 40 years of building my career have provided me with a lifetime of wisdom to draw on that informs and enriches all my interactions.”
I love that line, she writes.
I reply, “I would be honoured.”
A connection made between two strangers, through words poured out onto a screen, imprinted on paper far away.
Two lives intersect, their words carried on invisible strands of ethernet spinning through time and space.
Lives continue to unfold, moments woven through with possibilities unseen, unknown, untouched.
Chance encounters. Lives connected through sometimes momentary, sometimes extended moments.
Lives keep unfolding as winter descends.
Everything changes.
Everything remains constant in its changing states.
Winter has arrived.
Seeds of possibility quietly dream, cozy and warm within an Arctic embrace.
This too shall pass, the wind whispers. This too shall pass
And the river flows, sluggish now, as temperatures drop and winter takes hold.
I am often a creature of habit. I awaken at close to the same time every day. Spend an hour in bed reading the news, doing my puzzles, writing my gratitude list, listening to the quiet, meditating and contemplating my day.
I get up. Take Beaumont the Sheepadoodle for a quick morning meander to do his business, Come back in the house. Turn on my morning music which is always the same playlist of Alternative Classical music. Make coffee.Sit down at my desk. Open my laptop. Begin to type.
Usually, I have no idea what words will appear or what thoughts will arise.
I let the words and my morning flow like the river outside my window.
These days, the sun stays sleeping until much later than me, rising up well after 8am.
I spend my mornings in the comfort of darkness.
Lights from cars carrying workers towards the city car flicker as they cross the bridge, their stream intermittent, like an erratic jazz beat pulsing in time to the unseen rhythm of the musician’s mind.
This morning, an errant thought flits through my mind as I fill the kettle for my coffee.
Earlier, I’d read about the ongoing onslaught of Russian missiles against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Vast swathes of the country lie in darkness, no heat, no light, no water.
I woke up this morning. Darkness covered the sky holding on to the last vestiges of night before the sun turned dark to light.
I wandered from the bedroom, turned up the heat, turned on the kitchen lights and filled my kettle with water.
Darkness still holds the night, I still have power, heat, light, water.
I am grateful for my comforts.
I cannot turn the lights back on in Ukraine. I do not have the power to stop missiles flying and battles raging.
I can only say a prayer of gratitude for what I have and prayers for peace to come for those whose lives have been so terribly disrupted by one man’s desire for dominance over an entire nation, he brought war to their lands and cities, homes, and lives.
There is no sense in war. Only death and destruction. When the guns are silenced, the victors and the vanquished will never return to what was. Too much has been destroyed.
When the missiles stop firing, the destruction will be swept away and factories, buildings and homes will be rebuilt.
How do you rebuild safety for children who are cowering in basement cellars while bombs fall day and night?
How do you heal the wounds no one can see?
We might ask as Pete Seeger did in 1955 when he released,Where Have All the Flowers Gone, “Where have all the young men gone?“.?
They have gone to a war they did not ask for, did not want. In the end, for those who do return to rebuild what was lost, we must never stop asking, “When will we ever learn?”
OK. So maybe ‘amazing’ isn’t the right word, but it truly does fascinate me how lack of doing something, in this case building a video, can make building a video more difficult when I come back todoing it!
Take the video I’ve created for my She Dares Boldly 2023 Calendar. It took me DAYS! And over the course of those days (which were more precisely my weekend and evenings as my days were busy) I made countless mistakes, rebuilds, retakes, re everythings to complete the video. And, because I don’t have the finished product yet, I had to compile the pages manually – which took a bit of figuring out too!
Yet, here’s the thing. I learned lots. Enjoyed the process (even though it was chocker-block full of missteps) and have the joy of experiencing a great sense of achievement now that I’ve got it done.
There is another aspect to this calendar that is new to me! For the past 4 iterations, I’ve sold them via my Etsy store or e-transfer.
I’m still planning on doing that this year but, I wanted to let people use their paypal accounts too. Getting that properly set up on my blog took a lot of effort, and a lengthy chat with a WordPress expert – they were very patient.
In the end, it’s on my site. Etsy’s the next shop stop.
That’s all to say — theShe Dares Boldly 2023 Calendar is available. Thank you to those who kept messaging me to ask if I was creating one. You inspired me. And, in the process I had the gift of learning, growing, accepting and becoming. What a lovely gift.
I am unlearning a lifetime of habitually believing that to regret is to sentence myself to a lifetime of always looking back, never moving on.
Dan Pink’s The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward is the impetus for my unlearning.
Now, I could be cheeky and try to turn the tables on his teaching by saying, “I regret reading this book! It’s making me change my mind about something I thought was one of those unalterable life truths.
Fact is, I don’t regret it at all, which in this case, is a good thing because I can’t unread what’s already read.
Regret makes us human. Regret makes us better, writes Pink.
I’d also add, it makes our journey richer – as long as we enlist our regrets to improve our future.
Like, when you say something to your best friend that is insensitive or snarky. Regret rides in fast (at least for most of us it does) compelling us to apologize and make amends.
Pink calls those ‘regrets of action’. The premise being, I have a chance to recalibrate the present by owning and making amends for what I’ve done to harm/hurt another.
The more challenging regrets, he expostulates, are ones of inaction. The roads not taken. The deeds not done.
Those are harder to course correct, and in more instances than not, according to Pink, seldom are.
Those are the ones we carry with us to the grave.
Which gives credence to the oft-quoted Mark Twain aphorism (which apparently he never said)
What do you want more of in your life? It’s a question often asked in personal development courses.
What do you want? More of? Less of? None of? Lots of?
What you focus on makes a difference.
When I focus on the things that bring me joy, happiness, integrity, beauty, love, I move closer to the things I want.
If I focus on ‘the lack’, the things that don’t work, that upset me and pull me down, the less becomes my focus, drawing me away from all ‘the more’ I want to live a rich and fulfilled life.
Hangin' on
to everything
that doesn't matter
I lose sight
of everything
that matters.
Letting go
of everything
that doesn't matter
leaves me free
to cherish
everything
that matters.
I am wearing a comfort sweater today. One elbow is worn out. There’s a hole in the right armpit. But, the sweater is cashmere. It’s cozy. Well worn. Welcome.
I don’t want to let it go.
Fact is, its weary threads don’t matter. What matters is I am happy wearing it, especially in the house. It keeps me warm. It feels good against my skin.
No need to throw it out.
I can hang on.
There are other things in my life, however, that don’t measure up to hanging on.
If I inventory my emotional closet I’m bound to find things that no longer serve or fit me.
Like anger. Regret. Blame. Righteous hurts. Guilt. Shame…
They don’t serve me well as I continue to strive to live my life true to my values, principles and beliefs today.
Those things that do not serve or fit, I need to discard, no matter how well-worn the pathway to their memory vaults may be.
To let them go I must be willing to also let go of the story I tell about why I hang onto them. It’s the story that keeps me clinging to their threads of discord wending their way through my peace of mind. It’s their story that keeps me stuck.
We all have stories we tell ourselves about past events. Those stories where we’re the victim of someone else’s bad behaviour. The recipient of someone else’s anger. The target of someone else’s lies.
Fact is, victim or not, whatever ‘the other(s) did, it happened in the past. We truly can’t change the past, we can choose to free ourselves of its shadows by letting go of repeating the stories that hurt us.
Do you have a story you tell yourself about a time when you were the victim of someone else’s bad behaviour?
Can you find value in what happened? Can you find one gift from those events that create beauty or joy or love or wonder or possibility in your life today?
Search hard and when you find its gift, start telling yourself that story. Again and again. Eventually, that story will lead to a letting go of the other story. The one that doesn’t serve you today.
To live in possibility today, to create a world of wonder, awe, possibility, love, let go of the things that are keeping you stuck in holding on to everything that doesn’t matter. When all that really matters is left, love and joy will fill your heart and create beauty throughout your world today.
I am wearing a comfort sweater today. I’m holding on to it. It matters.
Dare Boldly 