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The last week of June is MY week. Not only does it symbolize the beginning of summer, a special week held deep in the hearts of many, but it is also the week of my wedding anniversary and my birthday!!!
In honor of “my special week”, I thought I’d share a collective of learnings that have deeply resonated with me over the course of my years on the planet, “words of wisdom”, if you will. I’ve compiled a list of things I’ve heard/read/discovered from various sources over the years that I try to adapt into my world. I am going to do my best to give credit where credit is due, but I’m just a blogger sitting outside on a hot summer day wanting to put as much of what I can remember out into the world for whomever needs to hear it today, so don’t judge too harshly. As my teacher friends and I would say to each other while sharing ideas, “Use, lose, or tweak”!
This leads to my first fun tidbit given to all new teachers upon their orientation into the classroom by good mentors (I find it applies to most everything). There are already good ideas out there, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, you just need to find something that is already working for someone else and use that. Not everything is a winner, but there is a lot of great info already out there and the internet is a huge resource. As a child of the card catalog generation, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have instant access to almost any question I have, and thanks to YouTube, I have the video instructions to go with a lot of it…helpful for all types of learning styles and in a variety of situations.
However, disclaimer and another useful tidbit (which also somehow reminds me of being in church)…Use discernment! If it doesn’t feel right to you or doesn't sit well in your body, then it’s probably not right for YOU. It doesn’t necessarily make it bad or wrong, just maybe wrong for you. When you see or hear truth, you can feel it, it excites or invigorates you. It sounds like coming home. The opposite is true when something is off, I usually feel it in my stomach, but you know your body best and when we stop and listen to it, it can tell us a lot.
This fun exercise I first read in a book by Martha Beck, who got it from her studies, and I’ve heard it several times since, but it never ceases to amaze me when I remember to put it into action. Your body has a built in “yes/no button”. If you stand perfectly straight and think the word love, or about someone or something you love you will begin to lean in a direction, for me it is back. Adversely, if you do the same exercise but think the word hate, trash/garbage, or other disgusting things you will lean in the opposite direction, for me it is forward. You can ask almost anything and your body will then lean into your answer. I especially have fun with this at the grocery store. When I hold items in my hand, my body will let me know if it is a good idea or not to buy them. I have had lettuce tell me no before (not often) and cookies say yes (also, not often), so the answer is not always what you think.
Speaking of your body, Masaru Emoto, did experiments with water crystals. He discovered that speaking kindness and love to them created the most beautiful molecular arrangements of the water crystals (think snowflakes), however, speaking negativity around them made them appear murky and sickly. Since we are made mostly of water, it made me second guess talking negatively about myself to myself. To take it a step further, I read you could raise your vibrational energy by drawing a heart under or on your water glass before you drink from it. As woo woo as it sounds, I like to think it works. But you should check it out for yourself. I keep a post-it with a heart on it when I don’t have my “Love You More” coaster available. (Life is Good apparel has a similar effect, for me at least.)
Another big Ah-Ha moment for me came from The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz (Honestly, this whole book was awesome and I highly recommend you read it at least once in your life). Basically, we all have our own stories in our head…like we are the star of our own movie, if you will. That makes everyone in your world a guest star/supporting character and you are the same in everyone else's movie. For me, it reminds me that we are not seeing the world the same as anyone else and it helped me a lot with perception. No two people will ever know me the same, and I’m becoming alright with that information. It used to pain me to think that no one really knew me the way I “really” was, but there is no possible way they could because I’m the only one being me, with me all the time, and living my life all day everyday. The same is true for everyone else. As Brené Brown describes it, the story I tell myself about what I see will be a different story in someone else’s head.
We also don't know what other people's stories are unless they tell us. Communicating this with others (read, mostly my husband) really helps a situation from getting out of hand. Which also goes along with a big lesson I’ve heard multiple times but is easy to forget. Everyone Is Doing the BEST They CAN. I feel like that’s a big one, so I might save more for another day, but this mantra reminds me that we are all human and to give people a break sometimes. We don’t know their whole story.
I had a psychology professor in college, Dr. Herbert J. Greenwald, who once told us expectation was the key to unhappiness. It basically goes, if you expect much and get little you will be disappointed. If you expect nothing, anything you get will be a welcome surprise. I like this one because it makes us accountable for our own happiness, since it is no one else's job to do so. Also, if you don’t tell people what you want, it’s not their fault that they don’t know.
This next one comes from a Netflix documentary, it has to do with our “Rich Life”.
1. What do you want your “rich life” to look like? 2. Live your life in that way. This has nothing to do with big houses, yachts, and fancy cars unless that’s what your rich life looks like. It has everything to do with what you value while you are on this Earth in this lifetime and investing in that.
It coincides with my very favorite Ted Talk ever, The Magic of Not Giving a F*** with Sarah Knight. She talks about our limited amount of “F*** bucks” and how we want to spend them. Again, not money necessarily, but how we spend our time. Don’t really want to go to that office baby shower, don’t…save those “f*** bucks” for something you do want to do. You don’t owe anyone an explanation either. Check it out online if you get the chance, it’s only 12 ½ minutes. It’s a great message and she’ll relay it way better than I can.
This one is everywhere, but for good reason…it works! Have a gratitude attitude! Be thankful and remember how blessed you are for everything. That car that cut you off might have saved your life, that electric bill you just paid says you are living better than a lot of people on the planet right now. The people in your world you love, the relationships you’ve experienced, the lunch you ate…all worthy of gratitude. When we slow down enough to remember to be grateful, your heart becomes a little more full and softens, not unlike the Grinch. It also has the added benefit of giving you even more things to be grateful for.
With gratitude comes more smiles, and if that sign hanging on the field at my son's tee-ball games back in the day was a lesson then I’m going to take it. “A smile costs nothing, but gives much!” Enough said.
This one lesson was a hard one for me and shook me to my core, but it also changed everything. Love isn’t earned, it is just there. You deserve it simply because you exist. You don’t have to do anything to deserve it, you can’t acquire bonus points to get more of it. This is true for everyone. If you have never heard that before, this is me telling you today…YOU ARE LOVED!!! NO MATTER WHAT! MORE THAN YOU KNOW!
Here’s a woo woo one, but if you open your mind and heart, you can try this experiment too. Trees are friends, they are alive, they are wise, and they are interconnected. Science is actually backing a lot of this and more and more information comes out about this all the time. For me, they are not just a source of shade and privacy, but also sometimes my confidants and comfort. I just saw a post recently with someone asking a plant to touch them, and it did. I believed this because whenever I ask for a breeze, those trees come through for me. So I was not at all alarmed or surprised when I decided to try this “trick” out in front of my family to see if it worked…I wouldn’t be typing this if it hadn’t.
This one is an oldie but goodie that I came up with in high school with friends. “The best kind of fun is the unplanned kind”. Whenever “the spirit moved us” we would follow along and end up having the best time. Still holds true. This also applies to events that you might not be looking forward to, but end up really having a good time at. I have an inkling that this theory is somehow tied to the advice of my professor, because oftentimes the really thought out and planned things we get excited for turn out to just be meh.
Finally, this one I learned myself back when I was really young, along with years of experience continuing to use it. The best way to stay cool in the summer is in a wet bathing suit! So if it’s summer where and when you are reading this and it is as hot as it is here right now, go put one on and find some water. Then go look for a shady spot and ask for a breeze. 😘