10/14/2018 0 Comments Schedule It!Throw away the To Do List.
Most of us are in the habit of writing out our to-do lists. We love the feeling of breaking down everything we have to do, listing it, and then crossing it out as we complete it. It feels so good to cross it out! But this is actually working against us. It isn’t setting us up for success. Let me illustrate the point with a quick story. A woman by the name of Lisa found that she would shut down after writing out her to-do list. She used all the organizational tools at her disposal: pen and paper, quick notes, an app on her phone, reminders set to pop up at certain times. Everything she could think of. Yet once she listed out everything she had to do, she felt worse, not better. The list overwhelmed her. She would find that when she listed all that she had to do, there in plain sight glaring right back at her, she would feel panic. It felt daunting to see all that she had to do, and it was too much. She would feel overwhelmed. Her heart would race, her palms would sweat. How was she going to get it all done? There weren’t enough hours in the day!! This was too much for her to handle. So instead of tackling the to – do list once it was written, the opposite would happen. She would shut down. She would look at the list, feel like it was impossible, and do something, anything else to take her mind off of all she had to do. Lisa had a ton of ways to avoid all that she had to do – she would eat a snack, make coffee, take a nap, call a friend, clean her apartment. She would do everything except the one thing she needed to do. She distracted herself, numbed herself, and did anything else. But there is a better way. Instead of writing out all that we have to do and getting overwhelmed, we can start scheduling it. Opening up our calendars and blocking out time to do the things we have to do instead of making a to do list can help us. When we have structured, dedicated time to do certain things, it can lessen the feeling of overwhelm. It can put our mind at ease to know that we have set aside time reserved for that one thing, and that we know when we are going to do it and how we are going to get it done. Scheduling what we have to do on our calendars gives us a sense of feeling in control. It puts our mind at ease because we know that it is going to get done, and we know when it is going to happen. So instead of a TO DO LIST, SCHEDULE IT instead. Tell me, in the comments below, how you are going to schedule your to do list today!??
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10/7/2018 0 Comments I am Proud of YouWe are our own worst critics. We beat up on ourselves. We spend time and energy thinking about the things we did wrong. We re-play the mistakes that we made. We get mad at ourselves for not yet achieving all the things that we want to achieve. Sure, they tell us that we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves, that we shouldn’t take life so seriously. That we should be grateful for what we have. That we shouldn’t tell ourselves things that we wouldn’t tell our best friends. That we should feel good about how far we’ve come. We live in a society that is privileged, that has literally anything we could possibly ever want. We aren’t starving to death, we have roofs over our heads, clothes on our backs. But it’s not that easy. It’s not like we can just snap our fingers and be suddenly happy. We know intellectually that we can never be perfect and that we would never expect anyone else to be. But we still get mad at ourselves. We still replay in our minds that time we screwed up, that mistake we made, that chance we didn’t take. But here’s the deal. We don’t always have to live like this. We can learn to be proud of ourselves exactly as we are. With that in mind, when we starting feeling the need to criticize ourselves, we can take a beat. A pause. We can stop the negative loop and start to remember all of the reasons why we are a great person. Why we are all worthy of love and respect. When we are feeling down, a boost of pride and self confidence is what we need. The constant self criticism isn’t making anything any easier. It isn’t solving any problems. For instance, when’s the last time you called a friend ugly, told them they weren’t good enough, or discouraged them from following their dreams? Never. You wouldn't say that to anyone, yet we seem to have no problem saying it to ourselves! We have to believe in our greatness to inspire us to find solutions to make it all better. We are more powerful than we think we are. We are beautiful beyond measure. We just have to remind ourselves of this. We can start by writing down a few reasons to be proud of ourselves right now. Remembering these things the next time we are feeling down can help us flip the script. Instead of being negative toward ourselves, we can inspire ourselves. We can give ourselves the momentum to take powerful action toward our goals. I am Proud of You
I am proud of you. You deserve to be treated with respect by everyone, especially yourself. The world needs your special gift that only you have to offer. The next time you are feeling down in the dumps about yourself, I hope that you will stop. Pause. And take a minute to reflect on all the reasons why we are proud of you. 9/30/2018 0 Comments The 3 Email RuleIn the 1960’s, people first started using email and by the 1970’s it took off to the form we are familiar with today. The original goal of email was to make our busy work lives better. Fast forward almost 50 years and the average American office worker now spends more than 10 hours per week on email. 10 hours is a lot of time! But it doesn’t stop there. Not only does checking our email take up time, but when we get distracted by our email, it takes a full 23 minutes to re-focus back on task. Let’s say on a typical day, you stop to check your email 3 times. That’s another 1.2 hours thrown out the window trying to get re-focused. Spending this much time on email can also lead to reduced productivity. Studies have shown that the average white-collar worker now deals with information overload, a condition caused by having to deal with increasing volumes of email. The irony is that email management isn’t on anyone’s job description. Yet it takes up valuable real estate in both our mental and physical space! With the explosive growth of technology and mobile devices, we are also receiving email outside of our working days. This new phenomenon triggers increased stress and decreased satisfaction with work. So what gives? Why are we so addicted to email? Is it just to cover ourselves to prove that we did what we needed to do at work? Is it truly an effective form of communication or just another thing we have to get through in our already jam packed, over-scheduled, not enough time day? Researchers at Harvard studied the effect of email on the brain. What they found was that even though email was invented to make our lives better, the opposite has happened. It has made it worse. Much worse. More stress, less time with family, and an unwritten expectation to respond within 24 hours. Seriously? Information in email often gets misunderstood, the wrong people get copied, other terrible things can happen. We know intellectually that when we type things in email, there is the potential that it can get forwarded. Some people say that we shouldn’t put anything in an email that we wouldn’t be proud to see on the cover of the New York Times. So we know this, yet we still slip up and at times may get sucked back into old behavior of typing things that sound passive aggressive or rude or angry. So why do we keep getting sucked back in? Something is drawing us to the email. It’s like a virus. How many times has an email set you off during the workday? When we get an email that we may misunderstand or that we think is being passive aggressive, it can trigger stress within us. Tempers flare, curse words get thrown around. Then we may elevate the situation – we lose our patience, march over to the sender of the email, and tell them what we think. Or worse, the email gets forwarded to our bosses. YIKES! Beyond just the misunderstandings that happen with email, there is also the email etiquette we have to deal with. Things like the dreaded cc: all reply with one word - “thanks.” Don’t even get me started on that one! That is why I implemented the 3 Email Rule. It provides guardrails to email etiquette. Here’s how it works. If something cannot be resolved in 3 email strings, pick up the phone. Walk to the office. Do whatever you can. Don’t let the confusion go on or the emotions run any higher than they need to. So 3 emails back and forth and then it’s time to get off the email string and talk to the people involved.
Email is a tool, it isn’t a crutch. It is unfortunate that some of us have let it have the force and influence it has over us today, but we can take back the hold it has on us!! Tell me, in the comments below, how you are going to try the 3 Email Rule today! 9/16/2018 0 Comments Get From the DayMost of us live our work lives in a very urgent, very hurried, very overwhelming state. Right when we wake up, we think two toxic thoughts, “I didn’t get enough sleep. I don’t have enough time.” So before we even get out of bed, before we pull the covers off of ourselves, before we put our feet on the floor, we already feel behind. This thinking makes us feel like we are already losing the day.
Then, we rush into work and we are laser focused on what we have to get done, what we need to finish. We are under major deadlines and people are relying on us! This puts us in a very weak mental state. We go into work and are hit in the face with never ending to do lists. We only have a certain number of hours in the day and it is fewer than what we need to get done what we have to get done. And then there is the pressure. OMG, the pressure! It builds and it builds and it builds…there is a huge pressure put on us to finish the work…on time and under budget. Phew. It is soooo much to deal with! Some of us get so overwhelmed that we don’t know where to start. So, instead, we don’t start at all! We procrastinate, we shut down, we want to close our laptops and crawl back into bed. We just try to get through the day. But what if we decided to take a different approach? What if, instead of trying to get through the day, we tried to get FROM the day? What about facing each day thinking of the things that we want to do, that we want to discover, that we want to experience? What if instead, when we wake up in the morning, we say to ourselves, " I got enough sleep, and I have enough time.” This puts us in a state of having enough. Enough clothes. Enough food. Enough creative ideas to find a solution. Going into life with the mindset of getting from the day will leave us energized, excited, and eager. It swings the power toward us. We get to decide what to focus on. We get to decide what we want from the day. The mental shift is subtle, but it is effective. When we think about what to get from the day, we focus on the things we want to enjoy from the day. From OUR day. In the comments below, tell me…what are the things you are going to get from your day…today? 9/8/2018 0 Comments Staying StubbornWhatever we want to achieve in life, no matter how big our goals are, there are going to be times when we are faced with difficulties. There are going to be opportunities for us to give up on what we are working towards, to slack off, to not be our best. But if we are going to reach our highest potential, we have to stay committed. We have to stay stubborn enough to believe that we will achieve. Nothing good in life ever happened by giving up. Dreams and goals were placed in our hearts from when we were a young age. While we may get distracted as we go through life, deep down in our souls, our dreams are still there. When we are finally ready to pursue them, we have to make a promise to ourselves that no matter what, we will do whatever it takes to bring those dreams to life. We have to have a stubbornness about it. We have to know that we will reach our dreams, no matter what. Being stubborn enough to think we can do it means that we make up our minds that we are in it for the long haul. It means standing up for what we believe it. To know we can reach the dream. Sure, there are going to be times when we are pursuing our goals and bad breaks happen. People don’t treat us right. They steal from us, they lie to us. We start feeling sorry for ourselves. We think it is too hard, so we want to quit. Or we want to get back at the person who did us wrong. So we may not put in as much effort toward our dream, and instead direct it toward getting even. As we are complaining and crying about it, we are taking away the energy that we need to pursue our goals. The distraction is going to hurt us in the long run. Take the story of Thomas Stephen Monaghan. He was raised in an orphanage after his father died when he was four years old. In college, in the year 1960, he borrowed $900 to buy a restaurant, a pizza place. His wanted to use the money he made at the pizza place to help pay his tuition. He never went back to school because the pizza place was losing money. He had all kinds of bad breaks. His business partner ended up stealing his life savings from him, a fire burned his restaurant down. His friends and family told him to give up, that this just wasn’t meant to be. But in the dark time, he stayed stubborn. He had an idea. He thought to take the pizza to the people. He had an idea of delivering pizza. He created a new pizza box that kept the pizza warm and made it so that you could carry multiple pizzas at the same time without them crushing each other. He started delivering pizza on college campuses. The idea worked. He started with one restaurant to what is now 6,000. In 1998, he sold his Domino’s pizza company for a billion dollars. Good thing he stayed stubborn. We can’t give up on the promises and the goals that were placed in our hearts. We may make mistakes, but we should stay stubborn and stay committed to our dreams. Here’s the deal. When we are going after our goals, we aren’t always going to be having fun. There are going to be times when we feel like giving up, when we aren’t having fun, when there are obstacles ahead. But that’s when we have to lean in even further. We have to get even more stubborn. We have to dig our heels in even deeper. We have to say to ourselves “I am going to do the right thing when it’s hard. I am committed to this goal, and I am going to be my best. I am not going to give up because I don’t see anything happening.” When things are easy and going our way, we are in it to win it. But when we get discouraged, when things are taking longer than we wanted them to, we may slack off. Being our best where we are, showing up with a good attitude, and doing more than you have to. We have to Stay Stubborn. We have to keep being our best day in and day out. There are going to be times when nothing is going our way. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s difficult. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The dream wouldn’t be in our hearts if we weren’t the right people for the job! We already have the talent. We are already full of the can-do mentality and power! We didn’t come this far to stop now! We have to stay stubborn. On the road to our destiny, half way through, every single one of us is going to be tempted to turn around and go back. Everyone will want to give up, stop and go back. Half of the people will. But we aren’t everyone. We have to move forward. The funny thing is that both people travel the same distance! If you start working toward pursuing your goals, learn things, go the distance, and then you stop, turn around and go back or if you keep pushing through to the end of your journey and reach the dream. Both people travel the same distance. Stubborn people outlast the difficulty. They go the extra mile and do more than they have to. They stay faithful. They stay loyal. Stubborn people reach their dreams. Year after year, stubborn people refuse to give up. They may see no growth, no increase. The dream in their heart may be taking longer than they thought. That’s a test. Are they going to give up? Get discouraged? No. We are different than everyone else. We are a stubborn people. We don’t give up. We push harder. We believe and we know that our dream is right in front of us. We have to say to ourselves, “I will never leave until I reach my goal. I will stay on the path towards it. I am committed. I am sticking with it through thick and thin. I am going to outlast the tough times. I am staying stubborn so I won’t take the easy way out. I remain loyal to this dream.” There will be plenty of times when we are tempted to walk away. We may think that It’s been too long, we’ve worked too hard, it’s never going to happen. We have to be consistent. Loyal. Faithful. We have to stay stubborn and know that we will win in the long run. But it isn’t for everyone. It’s not common, its not ordinary. Reaching the dream is for people who go the extra mile. We stay enthusiastic even when nothing is happening. When we stay stubborn and determined, we know that quitting is not an option. Staying stubborn means that other people can’t talk you out of your dream even when you aren’t making progress. When we stay stubborn, eventually things will turn around, our business will take off. When we stick through it and stay stubborn to wait it out, that’s when we will have the breakthrough, that’s when we reach our new level. Stay stubborn when it isn’t fair. When you have every right to give up, stay committed. Stay in it for the long haul. Stay stubborn and fulfill your purpose. Don’t give up because it isn’t fair. When you stay stubborn, doors will open. Stay stubborn, my friend. 9/2/2018 0 Comments Everyday is Your Birthday!Happy Birthday! Did you know that today is your birthday? And tomorrow and then the next day and then the next day? When it is our birthday, we aren’t afraid to ask big. I was at a kids birthday party last weekend and the little girl who we were celebrating ran up to me and said “It’s my birthday today!" So I leaned down and gave her a big hug. A few seconds later, she grabbed my leg and looked up and said “today is my birthday!” So I leaned down again, gave her a hug and said happy birthday! She didn’t leave. She said for the third time, “today is my birthday, what are you going to get me?” She felt entitled to a present, because she knew it was her special day. I thought, wow. That’s amazing. Here was this little kid, so confident, so sure of herself, that she just asked exactly for what she wanted. She expected to be given something. I wondered, why don’t we all act like that? Why don’t we go around asking for and expecting to get what we want in life? When it is our actual birthday, we aren’t afraid to ask. On our birthdays, we feel like it is okay to directly ask for something special, for what we really want. Any other time, we wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone, but on our birthday, when someone asks us what we want or what we want to do, we think “ok, I am going to ask for that outfit, that golf club, that party.” We have boldness and we ask. We don’t feel badly or selfish about asking for what we want when it is our birthday. Any other time of year, we hold back. We think about other people and how this could be troublesome or a bother to them. Too often, instead of approaching it like it is our birthday, we think it is greedy, it is selfish. Nothing makes the universe happier than to give us what we want. When it is our special day, we have a birthday boldness to ask for what we want. Here’s the deal. We deserve that birthday boldness mentality every day. We get to live in abundance. We can dare to ask for what we want like it’s our birthday. We each have special gifts, unique contributions to offer this world. We were all born, on our birthdays, with certain desires in our hearts. We wouldn’t want something if we weren’t meant to have it! Each day is OUR BIRTHDAY. So for those times when our dreams look impossible, when we are in low points in our lives, and when things look bleak and like they aren’t going to get any better, that is the exact time for us to act like it’s our birthday. Have the birthday boldness. We have to ask for making a way for our dreams to come true, even when we don’t see a way. The universe that breathed life into us on the day we were born – it is an overflowing universe. Ask for birthday boldness. Ask for the things that seem impossible. There is more than enough to go around. Ask for the acceleration of our goals. When we ask the universe for what we want, we have to ask like it’s our birthday. Ask for the secret dreams, for the deep down desires that were placed in our hearts. Yes, it may look like the odds are against us. But there is a force out there bigger than us. We just have to ask for it. We have to make bold birthday requests. We have to ask in spite of what people are telling us. Today is your birthday. What do you want? You can command whatever it is. You get to have that birthday boldness to ask for what you want. Ask for your dreams, your healing, you aren’t inconveniencing anyone. You are the most prized possession. TODAY IS YOUR BIRTHDAY, what do you want? TWO WEEKS from now it is your BIRTHDAY, what do you want? SEVEN YEARS from now it is your BIRTHDAY, what do you want? Every day when you get up think, with a childlike faith, “happy birthday to me, this is what I want today!” Have the boldness to ask for what you want. Go to the universe like it is your birthday. When we ask, we will see it show up in your life in ways greater than we can imagine. Have the birthday boldness to say “let my gifts stand out.. let my work stand out so that it is so inspiring that others. Make me shine, give me influence. Give me ideas. Let me use my influence to benefit mankind. I will help others.” Boldly ask like it’s your birthday. Dare to ask for what you want. Treating everyday like it’s our birthdays means we can accomplish our dreams faster than we ever thought possible. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!! So, in the comments below, tell me, what are your birthday wishes for today? 8/26/2018 0 Comments There is No SaleToday, I am here to give you some tough love. We live in a society of instant gratification. Social media platforms, amazon prime, drones, and other ways to get us whatever we want, whenever we want, has shifted our perspective.
We expect it now. We are used to instant gratification. When we know that there is something we want, we want it immediately if not sooner. Right this moment if not quicker. We don’t have to wait for anything anymore. We don’t have to think about, plan for, or scrape away to get what we desire. There is no waiting. We get it now. Years ago, people would have to wait for what they want. They would have to put off getting exactly what they were looking for. Before being able to search for things online, they would have to wait for a sale to get what they wanted. They would know what they were after and would sit and wait for prices to come down, for a great deal to come up. Here’s the deal. In life, we expect our success to be like a flash sale. We want it to happen instantly and overnight. Like something we can buy on amazon that we can get in a couple of days, we apply the same line of thinking with success. The reality is that there is no sale on success. It requires patience, hard work, and dedication. Take overnight success stories. In many cases, what may seem like an instant success out of nowhere is actually the result of years, decades even, of hard work. The road to success is long, twisty, and fraught with hardship. There comes a point in everyone’s career, business, or relationship when it looks like failure is right around the corner. When we realize that the sale we thought we had wasn’t really there. That’s when it is time to get real. There is no sale. When we are in the middle of the downward spiral, we have to stop and see that there is no sale. We have to embrace the reality of our situations, we have to accept where we are. We have to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and try to direct our energy toward solving the challenge at hand. When we finally realize that there is no sale, we have to stay calm. Pause. Center ourselves. Keep moving forward. We have to remind ourselves that challenges are part of the journey. So just like there is no sale, there is also no sold out to success. Success is available to everyone. So let’s get out there and get it! 8/19/2018 0 Comments The Big CWith an endless amount of things we could be interested in, there are many directions our unique paths can take us. We could pursue so many different things. Sometimes it feels overwhelming! We can be or do almost anything. Deciding what we want to do and who we want to become can seem daunting. This is our LIFE we are talking about!
Sooooo…how are we supposed to decide? An easy way for us to figure it all out is to look at what we are willing to commit to. The Big C. When faced with countless choices and directions to go, we can ask ourselves, what are we willing to really commit to? To become good at anything, we are going to have to spend countless hours getting better. If there is something we want to be an expert in, we have to get committed. We have to put in the time. The effort. The energy. Take a professional athlete. While there has to be a natural talent for a pro athlete to get to that level, there are so many other factors at play. They have to sign up for the Big C. They have to be committed. People who are professional athletes don’t just love the sport they’re competing in. They live it. They dedicate most of their life toward trying to reach their goals.They have countless hours of practice. Most train everyday for 3-6 hours a day. Some athletes spend 10,000 hours of practice before getting to the professional level. Others use virtual reality to continue the training. In addition to the training, athletes sign up for the Big C in other ways. Getting enough rest is important for athletes so they can train at optimum level. They stay on top of their diet to eat right for training. They keep themselves hydrated. Then there’s the mental prep they have to commit to. Athletes need to be in the right state of mind to stay on top of their game. Consider Michael Phelps, the 18 time gold medal winner, and his daily practice of visualization. During the months leading up to a race, Michael mentally rehearses for two hours a day seeing himself winning. He pictures himself in the pool, smells the air, tastes the water, hears the sounds, sees the clock and then sees himself being the first to finish the race. Dedication and seriously hard work contribute to the Big C. Their mind is on the goal. They are committed. So when we feel overwhelmed with all of the choices life can offer us, we can ask ourselves, what are we committed to doing? In the comments below, tell me, what Big C are you willing to sign up for today? 8/13/2018 0 Comments What’s Your Super Power?In our society, we tend to focus on the wrong things. As kids growing up in school, we are often criticized when we don’t come home with good grades. There is a lot of pressure put on kids to “do well in school.” And the dreaded report card…oh, that’s always a fun day when we come home with that.
If we aren’t good at something like math and we have a failing grade, what happens? We work with a tutor. We spend countless hours making sure we understand the subject. We spend time and energy making sure we don’t fail, again. How messed up is that? We spend all this time on things that aren’t our Super Powers! We waste countless hours on an area that we aren’t interested in. Something that we have no desire of ever pursuing as a career in our lives, we throw our hearts and souls into. The subject isn’t easy for us because we aren’t interested! We aren’t meant to be interested! We may not be good at math because we are supposed to be good at acting. Acting is our Super Power, not math. The more we don’t focus on our Super Powers and what we are naturally talented in, the more we steer off course from our true purpose in life. Yet, we can’t have ourselves or our kids have a “failing grade.” It would be embarrassing, shameful, humiliating. What if they don’t make it to the next school grade? So we waste time. We waste energy. We waste resources. All for the wrong Super Power. Then as adults, we go to jobs where we are evaluated with performance reviews. These fun meetings tell us what we could do better. We are coached to work on the areas we need to improve on. But WHY? This isn’t focusing on our strengths or our Super Powers! What if, instead, we worked toward getting better at what we are already good at? What if, instead, we make our Super Powers even more powerful? You don’t have to look further than Marvel Movies to see this played out. Each super hero has their own Super Power. They each have their own area of expertise. The Hulk doesn’t shoot webbing from his hands to climb walls like Spider Man or try to fly like the Falcon. Just like us, they each have their very own skill and ability. They stay in their lane. So for today, let’s choose to focus on our natural Super Power. It might be as simple as always being the cheerful, upbeat one in the office. So we decide to be the first to say hello when passing people in the hallways. One way to help us figure out what area we are naturally talented in is to listen for what people compliment us on. Is it our writing? Our speaking? Our organizational skills? If we all decided to pay more attention to what we are good at, and stop thinking about what we can’t do, what would our society look like? We all have unique talents and special gifts to offer to the world. It’s time we show them. So tell me, in the comments below, what is YOUR Super Power? 8/7/2018 0 Comments Unload the BackpackThings happen to us in this life that are not in our control. Beyond just the day to day annoyances, struggles, and inconveniences, real tragedies occur. Relationships we once thought would last forever end. The people we love pass away. Our bodies betray us through illness and diseases. We lose our jobs, our homes. We file for bankruptcy as we drown in student loan debt and bad credit scores.
Crazy stuff that we thought would never happen to us or could ever happen to us, happen! Life takes us down its own path that we never set out for. So yes, like it or not, we all carry around some baggage. If we aren’t careful, we may find that we drag this baggage with us. New relationships, new jobs, new conversations. We come in with baggage. We don’t even realize it is weighing us down. We come into what should be new, clean slate situations, and we bring in our past. The things that left a mark on us come right along with us! Why do we do this?!? Take my friend Marissa. A beautiful, energetic, successful woman in her 20s, from the outside looking in, Marissa has it all! She is smart. She is funny. She has a good steady job and some really fantastic friends. But she struggles in the dating area of her life. She just can’t seem to get past the two year mark in her long term relationships. When asking her more about WHY and WHAT HAPPENS, she breaks it down and it all becomes very clear. ME: Hey Marissa, sorry about the breakup. What happened? MARISSA: Oh you know, the usual. My knight in shining armor turned out to be a loser in aluminum foil. ME: Well, its okay. I mean, like I always say, “men are a luxury, not a necessity.” But what really happened? MARISSA: Well, he started acting distant. I wasn’t sure what was going on. He started getting really busy at work and I know he was stressed out. He had a lot going on. ME: Okay, well what changed? Did you start doing something different? MARISSA: I don’t know. I mean I was always there for him. Like ALWAYS. If he needed anything at all, I dropped what I was doing. I helped him in any way I could. I tried to be really understanding and cool with what was going on. ME: Well what about YOU. Before you met him, I know that you were really into yoga, working out, and doing your charity events. MARISSA: Yeah, I kinda put a little pause on all of that. ME: What? Why? What do you mean? MARISSA: Well, there were only a few times a week he could spend time with me. Like I said, he was really busy. He’s very important at his job and has a lot of demands. ME: hmm…sounds like he’s just not that into you. And sounds like you are bringing in your past baggage. MARISSA: What? ME: Remember that book and movie? Busy is another way of saying he is just not that into you. Busy is the relationship deal breaker. The word “busy” is just a bunch of BS. Men are never too busy to get what they want. Isn’t this the same thing that happened with the last dude you were dating? MARISSA: Yeah. Same thing. We were great, things were great, perfect even. Then about two years in, I started hinting at wanting to get engaged and he disappeared on me. ME: It sounds like you are repeating past behaviors. You might be bringing in your old baggage. Your backpack is filled with your story that you need to be there for them all the time. So. Here’s what you can do. Start your hobbies back up again! Do you. Go out with your friends, pick up new hobbies, try online dating. Do whatever it takes to get a life, a real life, of your very own. MARISSA: Yeah, but then that means that I won’t be able to see them that often. ME: EXACTLY!!! Stop dropping everything to be with them! If they like you, they will keep trying. Unload the backpack! Let go of the old baggage and story that you have to ALWAYS be there. They won’t get scared away by this if they really like you. Don’t you worry about that! MARISSA: Ugh, I don’t know. ME: Look. Your baggage is that you are a people pleaser. You don’t want to disappoint anyone. You are afraid that if you aren’t always there for them, they won’t want to be with you at all. You have to unload the backpack. That story you are telling yourself isn’t true. If they want you, they will find you. And remember, don’t waste the pretty! The key is to unload the backpack that is dragging us down. We enter in new situations with our past behaviors, our past stories, our past viewpoints. This could be the reason why we aren’t seeing different results in our lives. We have to learn to unload our backpacks. Here’s what we can do. We can walk into the next conversation, the next meeting, the next party with no expectations. No idea of how it is going to go. We can approach everyone we meet with curiosity. We can see them as someone we want to learn more about. When we unload our backpacks and let go of our past baggage, we can breathe again. We can look at old things with new eyes. We can feel the weight of the backpack lift off our shoulders. So tell me, in the comments below, what baggage do you need to let go of? What do you need to unload from your backpack today? |