I didn’t expect to record a vlog (video blog) today but I got home from work and just had to share this. I hope it resonates with you. Enjoy!
(click on the picture above to view on YouTube.)
Love always,
Jo
Tag: emotions
a feeling yet to be named
I’ve been doing something a little different with my Christmas list this year. Each year, Mike’s mom asks me for a Christmas list. And each year I put the same kinds of things: clothes and books.
This year I decided I’d make an intentional Christmas list based on how I want to feel in 2014.
The adjectives I came up with are
cozy | joyful | pretty | abundant.
But at the gym this weekend I realized there’s another way I want to feel in 2014…like me. But I haven’t come up with one word that sums up this feeling.
I was doing a strength exercise in front of the mirror and the song Mirrors by Justin Timberlake was playing on my iPod. When I locked eyes with myself in the mirror I felt…radiant, strong, beautiful, loved, appreciated. Like I was really seeing myself. Seeing the true me. I felt…like me. I adore that feeling.
Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? What is it called? I’d love to add it to my list.
caught between now and then
We were driving back from the grocery store and I was daydreaming about when we have a house someday and have family and friends over for meals all the time. Our home is cozy and welcoming and we always have people around, always feel loved.
We drove by the Cathedral and I noticed a man taking a picture. I looked and saw the Cathedral lit by a setting sun. It was sad and beautiful. In that moment I got nostalgic for the life we have now.
I think the emotions of this moment were enhanced by this song that happened to be playing on the radio, Trace Adkins’ You’re Gonna Miss This:
Before she knows it she’s a brand new bride
In her one bedroom apartment and her daddy stops by
He tells her it’s a nice place, she says, It’ll do for now
Starts talkin’ about babies and buyin’ a house
Daddy shakes his head and says, Baby, just slow down
Cuz’ you’re gonna miss this
You’re gonna want this back
You’re gonna wish these days
Hadn’t gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you’re gonna miss this
I know I’ll miss this place and this time when we move away. Miss the hustle and bustle of the city. The beauty of the National Mall and my favorite drive down Rock Creek Parkway along the water. I’ll miss the lazy weekend mornings at home, breakfast at the coffee table and the huge windows that greet me when I walk in the door. I’ll miss the days of just the two of us. I imagine I’ll look back on this as a time when life was simple and easy, when our cares were minimal.
But I still yearn for a future time when I don’t feel as isolated. When our weekends are filled with family and friends around our table and our house is filled with the warmth that comes with a home-cooked meal.
And so I feel sad. Sad because in yearning for that, I’m wishing this time away.
But I guess the good news is that now is good and then will also be good.
three angels
In the last couple months, I’ve come in contact with three women that I would call angels.
The first was a short interaction while I was walking back to my office from Starbucks one morning. I smiled at a woman as we came to the corner together and said “good morning.” She said “Good morning. Don’t you look beautiful. Do you know who you look like? The princess.” She meant Kate Middleton. She told me I looked like Kate Middleton! It was a magical moment because I had been feeling really fat, many of my clothes not fitting, and I thought my hair was kind of frizzy. But she saw something different. Made me take a step back and think about myself in a kinder way.
The second angel actually came during a visit to the National Cathedral. After leaving work early because my anxiety got the best of me, I walked over to the Cathedral for some solace. There was a service ending and was on the verge of tears. Maybe tears isn’t a strong enough word to describe what I was experiencing. I walked up to the verger and asked if she would sit with me for a minute. She gently led me to a row of pews and as soon as I sat down, I started sobbing. Deep, deep sobs. “Wow, what sadness,” she said as she held me in her arms and let me cry. She sat with me for an hour. An hour. She listened. She held the space for me to cry.
The third was sitting next to me on the second day of the Hay House I Can Do It Conference. Iyanla VanSant opened up the day with a grand entrance. She walked through the crowd singing “you’re the one I want, you’re the one I need, you’re the one for me.” And, you guessed it, I cried. I was super emotional and just let the tears flow. When she got to the stage, we sat down and she instructed us to take the hand of person on either side of us and invited us to close our eyes. “Your hand is in the hand of an angel,” she said. When we opened our eyes, she invited us to give the person next to us a big hug. Though one of my friends was on my left, I ended up turning to the stranger on my right (and she to me, though her friend was on the other side of her) and she hugged me and once again I sobbed into the arms of a stranger. She just held me. I’m pretty sure my tears were dripping on her skin and she just continued to hold me tight and just let me cry.
I’m so grateful that I crossed paths with these women when I did. Even though our time together was brief and I’ll probably never see them again, these interactions were really special.
Have you come in contact with any angels lately?
under pressure
I designated June as the “Month of Me” and spent the month relaxing, reading, cooking, having fun. I told myself I’d take June to relax and take a break from the go-go-go-go-go schedule that’s dominated my life since before high school and then hit July with gusto and dive head first into my business.
June was so great. I was really enjoying myself. And then July came along.
I’m not kidding, July 1 I started to feel sad. The sadness came up and up, just kind of lingering under the surface. I didn’t know where it was coming from. Things were and are good. But this underlying feeling of sadness was there and kept growing.
When we got back from vacation, the feelings of sadness got more intense and soon turned to overwhelming anxiety.
I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Then I thought, hmm, this started around July right at the end of the Month of Me, I should start playing more and having more fun. So I did that. It worked a little bit but wasn’t a magic bullet.
This morning it hit me. The Month of Me was great not because of the play and the joy I felt. The reason the Month of Me was so wonderful was because of the lack of pressure.
That’s it. The lack of pressure.
Because I took the pressure off myself and allowed myself to oh, I don’t know, just live my life, I was able to ENJOY my life. To have fun. To do things I like.
I let myself relax in June and then slammed the pressure back on July 1. And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
The pressure I feel is 100% self inflicted. I am my own worst critic and put so much pressure on myself, beat myself up. And that sucks the joy out of things.
Knowing that my joy is tied to the amount of pressure I (and/or Janice) put on myself, I can start to examine the pressure and question it. Acknowledge it, think about it, and then allow myself to let it go and relax and enjoy my life.
Things always get done. Ideas always come. I don’t need to be thinking about my goals and my business success every. single. second. In fact, when I’m enjoying my life and doing things that make me feel like me, I’m more creative and motivated and things get done.
To relaxing and enjoying life! Cheers!
Do you put pressure on yourself? How do you let it go or could you let it go?
my favorite feeling recently
I missed my bus stop the other day after work because I was thinking about all the things I was grateful for that day.
- How it was so nice to sit outside at happy hour
- How it was great to laugh with strangers at the bus stop when a bus pulled up and we didn’t know what it was and the bus driver looked at us like we were crazy
- How it was so silly when my boss and two coworkers broke out singing a Backstreet Boys song in unison
- How it was so nice to have Mike’s brother visit the weekend before
“Hmm, I like this. Maybe I should use my evening bus ride every day to think about things I’m grateful for.”
“Oh, wow, look at how beautiful the sun is shining on the Cathedral. Oh, I have some really great friends that I love.”
Next thing I knew the doors closed at my stop and I was still perfectly comfortable in my seat.
As I got off at the next stop, I was so happy. I love getting lost in feelings of joy and gratitude. It’s peaceful. I like losing track of time because I’m so caught up in the moment. I felt connected to myself and to the people that I love. Ironically, I felt grounded.
That was my favorite feeling in the last couple weeks.
This post was inspired by a prompt from the amazing, inspirational Danielle LaPorte and her Desire Map for Life Column.
feeling fear
I’ve been feeling really scared lately. I’m scared to start my business. I’m scared to put myself out there. What if it doesn’t work? What if I can’t support myself through coaching? I feel extremely vulnerable because my business is me, is my heart. And if that’s rejected…woah. That. is. risky.
It’s amazing how things connect and work out. I remember in the first weekend of coach training, we had to pick a word from a list of self-doubts that described us. I struggled with this and felt like none of the words really represented me–I could counter them pretty easily.
But we had to pick one for the exercise so I picked fearful.
I’m just now realizing how deep my fear runs. On the surface, I’m not super scared. Fearful isn’t a word I’d use to describe myself. But deep down, I feel fear and that fear feels really really real. It’s a pit in my stomach. One that’s been fired up for weeks now.
It’s distracting. It makes me want the comfort of home, of my mom and my siblings and my in-laws. It’s brought lots and lots of tears. It’s made me lose sleep, lose my appetite. I’m feeling antsy and physically weak. I literally want to run and hide.
The first step in moving through this is acknowledging it. Is admitting that I feel extremely scared and vulnerable. Even in writing this post, my fear is bubbling up. It’s thinking “no, don’t admit to having this. don’t hit publish.” It knows, and I know, that in writing about this, the fear will lose some of its power over me.
Thanks for reading.
Have you ever felt extremely scared or vulnerable? How did you move through it?
just playing around
Earlier this week I mentioned that I’ve been trying to play more. While it’s seemed a little scary at first, I’m getting into it! Here are some things I’ve done to play in the last two weeks.
I started doodling when I get home from work for a few minutes. Just sitting down at the kitchen table for 10 minutes or so. It’s been calming. Here’s my first doodle:
It’s a boat on solid ground!
I didn’t set out to draw a boat. I actually started with the paper portrait orientation and drew a hang-man like upside-down L. Then I drew what became the sail and turned the paper sideways. Before I knew it there was a boat. And then there was a boat with grass underneath it.
Who knew there was going to be so much meaning/message to my first doodle.
One night last week, Mike and I played Scrabble.
It’s not lost on me that the word “zen” was my highest scoring word in the game.
I also bought watercolors and some other paints. Here’s my first watercolor:
Isn’t it so fun??
And lastly, Mike and I through the frisbee around at the Cathedral the other night before dinner. It was SO fun. I was running, running, running to get the frisbee, you know “going long.” I was smiling SO much. I kind of felt like a happy dog running to catch a ball in its mouth. It was so great.
Mike can catch the frisbee between his legs so I was trying to pick up that trick. No luck. (as you can imagine). Enjoy that visual, will ya?
I’m telling you, this play thing is no joke. It’s so good for the soul. So I challenge you, how will you play this weekend??
play? what does that mean?
I’ve been struggling lately. Anxiety at an all-time high. Panic attacks. Weeping like I’ve never wept before (though that seems to have subsided, thankfully). I actually didn’t even realize that what I’ve been experiencing is anxiety because the dry mouth, night sweats, lack of appetite in the morning, and crazy intense feeling in my solar plexus that I’ve been having are not my usual anxiety symptoms.
That’s why I haven’t posted in a while.
I googled “anxiety cures” the other day, and after finding a bunch of random things that were both a little tempting and a little scary/seemingly scammy, I came across this article. Charlie says that he cured his anxiety through play.
“Huh,” I thought. “That’s interesting.”
Why not try it? What do I have to lose? I could use a little more fun in my life.
This begs the question…
What does play mean to me?
I talked to my coach about it and here’s what I’ve come up with:
- Biking–a few years ago my friend Jen was in DC for the weekend and we rented bikes. At the end of our ride we biked up this steep hill and I just remember peddling my heart out. I was grinning from ear to ear and surprised and how amazingly fun it was. I biked all the time as a kid and LOVED it.
- Coloring/doodling/drawing
- Body Combat–I was a regular at Body Combat before my wedding and again, this is one of those activities that leaves me with a goofy grin on my face. The class just makes me feel so powerful and fierce; it really is FUN.
- Dancing
- Yoga
- Frisbee toss with Mike
- Long walks
- Painting
I’m trying to think of more things and add more play into my life. I’m not going to lie, sometimes thinking about play fires up my anxiety. It scares me a little bit. It’s almost like I’m afraid of what might come up when I settle in and let myself enjoy it.
It’s funny, my friend Allie and I went on a hike yesterday and then settled in with a bottle of wine at a nearby vineyard. Immediately I started to feel guilty. Like I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be working or doing something. I told Allie that I felt like I didn’t deserve this goodness, this relaxation. She said “But you do. Doesn’t everyone?” I nodded and thought “of course.”
So that’s what I’m working on lately. Learning how to play. Learning how to settle in and let myself enjoy.
What does play mean to you? What activities allow you to relax and feel joy?
day by day
I’m all about creating a life you love, living with intention, having a vision and long term plans. Where do you want to be 6 months from now? 2 years? What do you want your life to look like in 20 years?
Do you have big, crazy, dreams? Cool. Let’s make that happen.
The last two weeks, I’ve been having a really hard time. Struggling internally at an intensity I’ve never experienced before. Extreme anxiety, lots and lots and lots of tears. I’m ok. Everything is OK. It’s just something I have to work through.
But in an email to a friend this morning, I wrote “Can you say a prayer for me?” When I remembered that this afternoon, I thought, wow.
So while I’m all for big plans and visions and making things happen, this experience has taught me that sometimes you just need to take things day by day.
And that’s OK.