Happiness Pie....Go Ahead...Take a BITE!

Dear Lovely…..

I’ll be completely honest with you; I have the patience of a gnat….So when I create something new and get no response within the first five minutes I immediately begin to doubt myself….  That little voice, the one I told you about in an earlier post; NOna, rears her ugly little head and almost instantly I start hearing, “you don’t know what you’re talking about, nobody cares, you’re talking to yourself, nobody is listening….GET A JOB.”  It’s the same story every single time, no instant gratification = compete and total failure….

Yesterday was one of those days….tiny little meltdowns that culminated around dinner time with me deciding that I had made a big mistake; people don’t want to hear about their flaws and celebrate them…  So sometime around dinner I had decided that this was just a stupid idea that flopped before it ever got off the ground, I was cranky, mad, sad, and myriad of other self-sabotaging adjectives…  I tossed and turned most of the night lamenting over how I was going to tell my husband that all the money we had just spent on a trademark was just plain stupid and it was time for me to get a job at Taco Bell where I could at least get a discount on comfort food…

Then I woke up this morning and there in my in box was a teeny tiny little miracle…a very short  comment on my blog from a writer (thank you Joy) that simply said she was interested in featuring my blog in a newspaper.  WHAT?  I read it about fifteen times and all I could think to myself was “I thought nobody was reading this.”  I believed that besides a dear friend of mine and my poor husband who out of love for me HAS to read it nobody was even looking at my ramblings.  I’m sure you can only imagine that while I am crazy-over-the-moon about this blog being in a newspaper, the idea that someone was actually seeing it, well that just about blew me right out of my chair….

Here I was, the wildly impatient girl thinking that I had failed before I even got started and then I find out that the Universe just might see things a little differently, and perhaps is running on a different schedule than I am. 

Maybe you’re just like me (though let’s pray for your sake that you’re not), you had this BIG idea, the one you are so passionate about, the one that you just HAVE to share with the world because it means THAT much….you launch your dream and as you are waiting for the glowing reviews, as you are sitting and watching your inbox for the piles of orders that you KNOW are coming, you are instead met with that God awful sound of crickets….dead silence.  Nobody is applauding, nobody is ordering and you are sitting there ready to jump out the window.

But what if…..what if any minute something amazing is about to happen?  What if tomorrow or the next day your audience finally finds that trail of bread crumbs you left for them and slowly but surely they begin to find their way to you?  What if you had talked yourself into quitting before you ever even gave it a chance and just before the orders started piling up you shut the doors, pulled the plug and went back to bed?

The funny thing about dreams is that if you’re not terrified, if you’re not questioning yourself and fearing that maybe your IT won’t work then you probably aren’t really putting as much of yourself into it as you thought.  Dreams are personal, they are YOU out there for the whole world to see and yes, even be judged….but that’s life my friend.  If you’re a functioning human being then of course there will be doubt….of course Nona will be there with her big black flag and her nasty voice and her road blocks, and yes, even her crickets….but what matters most is what you choose to do about it.  How important is it to you?  What are you willing to risk in order to have your slice of the big beautiful Happiness Pie?

For me, well I’m working my butt off to slowly get to a place where the possibility of the amazing things that COULD happen is more important than the immediate outcome.  I am crawling at a snail’s pace to get there, but I am moving forward…and so can you.  You are this bright, shiny, perfectly imperfect woman with a dream and I promise you that your bliss is coming but you’ve got to intentionally leave the light on so that it can find you.  You’ve got to keep going forward in spite of that nasty Nona, you’ve got to force yourself to push on regardless of the fact that today might not have been your best day because there is a very good chance that tomorrow can be PHENOMINAL. 

You and I….well we have fabulous lives to live and whether you constantly believe it or not I promise you that you are worthy of every glimmer of hope that you had when you began your journey.  The road is bumpy and there might very be obstacles around every turn….but you CAN push through, you have what you need to make it happen…but the choice is yours.  Choose bliss or get yourself a fabulous polyester uniform and go get a job at Taco Bell.  (turns out I won’t be joining you there after all….) Go after the dream or spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been…..it’s completely up to you but I’m thinking bliss trumps regret every time!

Today is a FABULOUS day, a perfect day to invest in a pair of big girl pants,  grab a shiny fork and give yourself permission to take a BIG JUICY bite out of your very own Happiness Pie!  It’s fat free, incredibly satisfying and will leave you feeling full in the most delicious sort of way!

Wishing you the patience, courage and desire to truly believe in your dreams and the clear vision to see them through to fruition!

Endless blessings to you!

Heather

A Monday morning wakeup call!

Dear lovelies....
It's a dismal Monday here in Naperville and if you're anything like me and respond to grey weather by wanting to jump right back into bed and hide until the sun comes up, I have a simple message for you today.  GET UP GET UP GET UP!
It's easy to feel lazy and BLAH when the rain is coming down in sheets and the sun is still sleeping, but you and I, well we've got much to do today!  We've got dreams to nurture, places to go, adventures to have and so much more just waiting around the corner....
So...it's a rainy Monday, so it's not a good hair day....that just means you get to work a little harder than usual to be the girl who spreads a bit of sunshine wherever she goes!  So slather on that lipgloss, throw those shoulders back and get OUT there!
You just never know what sort of amazing things are waiting around the corner!  The day may be a bit flawed, but that doesn't make it any less potentially fabulous!!!
Wishing you a chocolate covered bliss filled sort of day!
Heather

Using Your History

Once upon a time when I was 15 years old my family was homeless.  Yup, you read that right, homeless.  I can remember it like it was yesterday because the whole experience obviously helped to shape who I am today.  I was sitting in Biology class and suddenly my mother’s face was at the door and she was feverishly gesturing for me to come out into the hall.  Mr. Mundy, my teacher saw what was happening and immediately excused me.

The moment I stepped outside my mom said “get your things out of your locker, your brother is already in the car and we’re moving.”  Uh….how is that even possible?  When I had left for school that morning everything was just fine.  As we got to the car I remember seeing my brother in the back seat looking just as confused as I was, but neither of us really said much because of the obvious state of panic my mother was in.  In a million years you could have never prepared either of us for the circus our lives were about to become.

As we pulled on to our street I can vividly remember seeing neighbors lined up as if they were getting ready to watch a parade.  There were moving trucks and two police cars sitting in front of our house and my father handed us a box of garbage bags and said,” hurry up and just put everything in these.”

Still reeling from the confusion of what was happening we walked into the house to find what felt like people everywhere dumping out our drawers and taking our furniture out of the house.  Without knowing what else to do I went up to my bedroom in tears and just started putting everything in the bags we were given.  It was obviously incredibly confusing and even today, it’s not something we ever talk about much and I still don’t completely understand what happened. 

What I do know for sure, what I do remember is that as all of our belongings were either being loaded onto trucks or piled on our front lawn not one of our neighbors came across the street to see if we were okay.  Most of the men were working, but the women were gathered in clusters pointing and staring as if they were watching a movie.  It was the most humiliating and horrible experience of my teen-age life.

Within a few hours our house was empty and the police put a big sticker on our door with some sort of box attached to the lock; we had just lost our home.

Evidently anything that we hadn’t put into the car was being taken to a storage locker…and our dog, well my mom drove off with her and we never saw that sweet dog again.  Later that afternoon we checked into a hotel….we stayed there for a couple of days and then all four of us moved into another one room hotel for the next several weeks. Eventually my parents did get us into a house, but by then, all of our belongings were gone because my father had never paid the bill on the storage locker.  To this day, I still don’t know what happened I only know that was just the beginning of what would prove to be an incredibly tumultuous and painful next couple of years, but that’s a whole other story. 

What sticks in my head today almost twenty eight years later is not that we lost our home or our belongings…no, what has stayed with me is that not one single person standing on the street that day, or even the days that followed, ever did one thing to see if she could help. We had grown up playing with their children, had sleepovers together, carpooled, and gone to school together yet, when the time came to really be there, when they could have done something good, they chose to do nothing but gossip.

There are large chunks of that experience that have stayed with me. I know now that the challenge is not trying to forget the past, but instead it is finding a way to use it to my advantage and make peace with it.  There are experiences we have in our lives that can damage us and we don’t even realize it until we are older and have the opportunity to look backwards.  The way those women responded to what our family was going through left a stain on my heart.  But it also opened my eyes and I truly believe that having been through that sort of humiliation has actually proven to be a valuable tool for me.

It All Comes Full Circle

Who would have ever believed that 25 years later I would be driving home and suddenly see a family on our block standing in front of their home with all of their belongings piled high on the front yard. The moment I saw it, I knew exactly what had happened and I instinctively just wanted to help.  We didn’t know the people, but I did know that they had kids and it was about to become a very scary situation for them.  So, in the midst of the chaos, when the school bus dropped the little one off that afternoon I was at my front door waiting to invite him in for cookies and cartoons while mom and dad sorted things out.  It was the least I could do.

 It was right around Christmas time and I can remember like it was yesterday that later that evening our neighbors had begun to gather and were whining about the fact that all of that JUNK on the lawn was taking away from how pretty the neighborhood had looked for the holidays.  One man even suggested that perhaps he should just rent a dumpster and throw everything on the lawn into it.  There was no shred of concern for the children or offer to help pack up their belongings.  There was no sympathy for the family or outpouring of assistance there was only malice, contempt and glaring judgment.   I was seeing the other side of what had happened to my family and it broke my heart all over again.

 I can’t possibly know how I would have responded had we not gone through that very same experience. I like to believe that I would have reacted the exact same way and wanted to reach out to help….  But what mattered in that moment was that I had lived through this horrible experience as a teen-ager and when the time came for me to use my history as a gift or a curse, I chose to make it into something positive.   I made the most of what I had been through and did what I could to stand up for those people and help, it was a conscious choice and one that I am proud to have made.   It would have been just as easy for me to recall what had happened to my family and respond by doing nothing since nobody had helped us, but I remember having the distinct feeling that seeing another family lose their home right on my own block couldn’t possibly just be a coincidence and instead must be an opportunity for me to do something potentially good.

 Now What?

Undoubtedly we have all lived through our own share of crap….bad things have happened to us that we can either use as excuses for our behavior or we can allow it to empower us.  The choice is ultimately yours, but I can tell you from personal experience that when you use your history for good you have the potential to change the life of somebody without even knowing it; you have the ability to make something a bit easier for the person in the midst of it.  Your experiences, for better or worse have given you a gift, a unique insight and put you in a place where you might be able to see or understand things that most other people wouldn’t even begin to relate to.  Perhaps at the time it was the worst experience of your life, but today you can decide to use it to help someone else and in the process you just might wind up healing yourself.    Ironically enough, in some strange sort of way my being there on the day that family lost their home brought things full circle for me and for the first time in more than twenty seven years I was finally free of it and could let it go. I won’t ever forget what it felt like to have lost our home, but today it helps to know that in some amazing sort of way it gave me the unique ability to be able to help someone else in the moment they needed it most. 

It may not be obvious right now, but the darkest moments of your history have the potential to bring someone else comfort and light.  I hope that when the time is right you will choose to be the one who can make a positive difference.

Wishing you overflowing buckets of bliss!

Heather

Walking Your Own Path

Sometimes I just want to slap myself.  Life is going along just fine and then I bump into somebody who I believe is light years ahead of where I had hoped I would be at this age and I am immediately knocked down a peg….or two.  When this happens I can easily go from Happy-go-lucky-Heather to brooding girl in the blink of an eye.

As I am stumbling along on this new journey of mine and working towards a place of unwavering self-acceptance I need to teach myself how to be proud of myself for all the accomplishments up to this point.  I need to remind myself that the woman sitting next to me, the one I think is so successful has her own story and I have no idea what it took for her to get here.  Perhaps she was living in a cardboard box until one day she found a twenty dollar bill on the ground, treated herself to a scratch and win lottery ticket and won the big prize.  Or maybe her dream meant so much to her that she ate nothing but Alpo and Ramen noodles for months while she saved every dollar just so she could get her plans into motion.  It could be that she is just like me….that she too passes a woman on the street and suddenly can’t help but think that she has fallen behind in her own plans.

At the end of the day, we are all our own worst enemies.  Instead of being happy with where we’ve been, we choose to see ourselves as late in the game.  We focus on what has NOT happened instead of basking in the warm glow of just how much we’ve actually accomplished.

The older I get, the more I understand that it’s really a personal  mind game and the one who wins, the one who gets to be happy is the woman who can choose to see it all from a glass half full place.  She is the woman who understands that each of us is here to walk our own path at our own pace.  When it comes right down to it there is no set syllabus that tells us where we need to be at some certain stage of our lives.  So why bother spending another moment believing we are falling short when the only measuring stick is the one we are needlessly carrying.

We burden ourselves with so much negative self-talk that we leave no room for all the good news.  You’re divorced by the age of thirty?  So what.  You’ve changed careers 26 times in the last four years?  Big deal.  Your bank account isn’t as fat as your next door neighbor?  Why does it matter?  And yet, for most of us it does, and this constant comparing ourselves to others has the ability to hold us down and keep us believing that we aren’t quite there yet, that we’re missing something…but what if it’s just not true?

When I was in my early twenties and just starting out my career in the fashion industry my father gave me what I now understand to be among some of the worst advice I had ever heard.  He said, “ if you want to be successful, pick someone who is more successful than you are and do everything you can to be better than them.”  That little tidbit of wisdom did nothing more than prompt me to spend years comparing myself to every woman I ever met.  It lead me to feel awful about myself and made me incredibly competitive.  I know my dad didn’t mean it that way, I know that he was, in his own way telling me to reach higher, but his hidden wisdom backfired.   Today I understand that what he probably SHOULD have said was “just get out there, be proud of yourself and do your best.”   Period, end of story.

When all is said and done, after you’ve spent years of your life comparing yourself to everyone around you, one thing is certain….at the end of the day you’ll have denied yourself the gift of seeing just how far you’ve actually come.  Throughout the course of your life you will have moved SO many boulders and mountains out of your way to get here.  You will have overcome obstacles that most would have run away from and yet, look at you….YOU ARE STILL STANDING   Beautiful, successful YOU have walked a long and winding road just to be able to get to THIS place and you’re still not letting yourself be just a tiny bit proud?    Maybe it’s not where you had hoped you would be, and if that’s the case, it’s okay; just  get on some comfy shoes and keep walking.  But today…. Today what matters in THIS moment is that you’re here and you have so much to be proud of, I promise you that you do!!!

 Look around you lovely friend and let yourself just this once drink in a little of your own sunshine!  Give yourself permission to exhale for a few minutes and offer yourself a gentle pat on the back…you deserve it….I promise you it’s true!   Do not waste one more moment toiling over the rest of the journey or wrong turns you made along the way (sometimes the most exciting part of the trip is the wrong turns because you wind up stumbling on the most fantastic adventures).  You’re still in it….still moving forward, and that’s what matters most!  Imagine how very bored we would all be if we magically woke up one day and POOF…everything was perfect.  What would we have to work towards?  What would push us to keep trying?  Given the choice, I choose the obstacles, the stress, the having to push and push until I feel like I can’t take one more step….because somehow I do, I leap forward and I keep going and so can you!

Take heart lovely friend….you don’t need to spend one more moment comparing yourself to another soul… Your journey belongs exclusively to you, so stop every once in a while to enjoy the scenery and quit spending so much time on what is NOT there….  You are this beautiful, always evolving, forever changing and perfectly flawed woman and no matter where you right this moment, I promise you that you are exactly where you need to be. 

Wishing you the clear ability to see the beauty of just one tree today instead of comparing them to every other shrub in the forest!

Heather

Wearing Shoes That Fit

I spend a lot of time day-dreaming.  I see my projects and goals for what they could look like when they are finished and how amazing I will feel when I finally set them free.  I imagine large crowds of people all lined to buy my wares and celebrate my message.

 Then the phone rings and I am back in the real world lamenting over my unusually LONG list of WHAT-Ifs….  Most of the time I convince myself that I am a psychic and already know what the outcome of something will be long before it ever sees the light of day…this “ability” of mine gives me everything I need to assume the worst and sit frighteningly still.  It keeps me safe from worry, protects me from nay-sayers and insures that I don’t get hurt….

But then this little voice creeps in and asks the loaded question; “what if you are wrong?”  DAMMIT!  That’s right!  It turns out that I am not in fact psychic….I have NO way of knowing WHAT the outcome will look like and to keep it tucked away in a safe little box just might be a little foolish and self-serving.   Oh but it’s so much more comfortable here in Safety Town.  I run no risk of being rejected….nobody can judge me, and I can stay so cozy and warm right here under this rock.

The funny thing about dreams is that in my warped little mind, I have often talked myself into believing that it’s far more exciting to keep them close to the heart instead of giving them life and potentially risking a less than fabulous outcome.  This has been a pattern for most of my life; in order to keep the dream alive and pretty I just don’t share it.

Today I asked myself a different sort of question; what do I risk if I don’t claim my dream?  What happiness will have eluded me just so I could stay comfortable?   Now there’s something to really thing about….the big scary elephant in the room that begs to know what I will have potentially sacrificed if I just don’t do a thing.

Sometimes I look around me and become acutely aware of the people that came before me and never bothered to go in search of their own dreams.  They have a certain look about them that is one part longing, one part melancholy, a tiny sprinkling of bitterness and a whole lot of regret.  I don’t want to be that person.  I don’t want my story to start off with “She had so much potential…..”

You and I deserve our own slice of the Happiness pie.  We deserve big fat bites of bliss layered with spoonfuls of laughter and a zest for life that has the power to take us to the moon and beyond.  We deserve to finally put on fabulous shoes that actually fit so that we don’t have to spend one more moment tripping over our own two feet.  We deserve to get out of our own way, get out of our own heads and give the world a chance to celebrate our dreams with us.  There is endless hope in possibility and if we intentionally hide who we are or what we want to be then aren’t we essentially slamming a BIG door shut before we ever tried to walk through it?  YES!

We can choose to wrap ourselves in a big scratchy blanket of fear and anticipation or we can stand up, toss it aside, let a little light in and decide to give our dreams a chance.  Twenty years from now when you are looking back on your life wouldn’t you rather be able to say “I tried it ALL” versus, “Well, I played it safe and look at me…..no bruises!”  Give me the bruises any day!  Give me the bumps and chips, scrapes and scratches so that when I am ninety years old I can gather all my friends at the Retirement home around the piano and tell them delicious tales of where each and every scar came from!  I will have billowy blue hair, a rainbow colored cape and if all goes as planned I will be exhausted from having LIVED every moment of my life.

Wishing you the freedom to LIVE your life as big and colorful as you could ever dream it can be!

Heather