On Being In the Driver's Seat...

My last post, On Doing It Scared, talked about the amazing book I recently read, Do It Scared, by Ruth Soukup. I have been exploring this concept a lot the past few weeks, after seeing a quote that read, "Sometimes, you have to do it afraid."

In my 20s, I lived in Detroit, and I would regularly make long distance treks across the country to visit friends and family back in South Carolina. I didn't think too much about these drives. I just did it. I began to know the route like the back of my hand, and I had favorite places to stop, landmarks that helped me keep up with the time left in the drive. These were also the days before GPS, I might mention. My handy roadmap was always nearby, just in case I got tired and missed a key exit, or suddenly everything seemed unfamiliar. These long road trips to and from South Carolina, as well as other places in and around the Detroit area (including driving in Detroit itself!) just became part of my normal. 

But at some point over the last few years, I started telling myself the story that I was afraid to drive in heavy traffic. On Interstates. In big cities. 

I don't have an explanation for this, the closest thing I can come up with is the osmosis of  'group think.' I have noticed that driving outside of the general area where they live seems to be a 'last frontier' for many women. If they are married or in a serious relationship, they often don't do any long distance or heavy traffic driving. It's left to their husband or partner. I have had many even tell me directly, "I don't do any more driving than I have to."

I think, somewhere over the years, I began telling myself this was my story, too. But it isn't. I had to step out of this story and own the one that had been mine before, years ago - that I am a competent and capable driver. That I can navigate long distances, interstates and heavy metropolitan traffic now just as easily I did in my 20s, when I lived and drove in one of the biggest cities in the United States.

The result of this mindset shift was Summer Road Trip 2019! We took off to visit a place I have wanted to see for as long as I can remember - Amish Country in Pennsylvania. 

Lancaster County, I love you!!!

Lancaster County Yarns and Wools/Labadie Looms. Best yarn store ever! 

We also visited some friends who live in New Jersey, but very close to Philadelphia, so we were able to spend some time in Philly! It was great to see them and experience the city.  So many fun and happy memories made!

Philadelphia by sunset, from the Cooper River Bridge in Cherry Hill, NJ

These friends were kind enough to take us north a bit to visit another friend who lives right outside of New York City. I haven't seen her in over 10 years, and it was great to be together again, see her area of the world, have a chocolate raspberry coffee at the shop where she performs live several times a month.

It was such a great trip and amazing time there...I could easily digress and let this slip into a travel blog, so I will pause here to say, yes, I did it afraid. Totally. Afraid of getting lost. Afraid I would have car trouble and be stranded. Afraid of having an accident. Afraid of driving in heavy traffic. But none of these fears were founded in anything other than the abstract concept that these things can and do happen. Not just on long road trips, but also driving around our own towns and communities. And I will tell you a secret - there's an amazing sense of empowerment that comes from rewriting your story, changing your mindset, rephrasing your current dialogue. 

Yes, there were times the drive was scary. But not outside of Baltimore, MD, a city so big that the Interstate runs through a tunnel underneath it; not outside of Washington, DC, where there's exit signs for Pennsylvania Avenue; not outside Richmond, VA. It got scary outside of Charlotte, NC, a city I have driven in and around numerous times and is somewhat familiar to me. I would never have imagined that this was where things might get a bit hairy, but that was the reality. Thank goodness for GPS and roadmaps, and older highways that take a bit longer but can still get one home. 

I'm so glad I tackled this before "I don't drive more than I have to," became a permanent loop in my mind. And I'm sure that like so many others, I would hand over the wheel in an instant if there was someone else there to drive. It's much easier to be a passenger, after all. But being a passenger because someone else wants to drive is different than a fear of being in the driver's seat. Fear shouldn't hold us back if there's places we want to go and things we want to see and no other driver to take us there. We should be able to slip into the driver's seat, not only of our cars, but of our own lives, when the urge to see and do and be someplace new is the one we need to follow, and we are the only means of getting ourselves there.

On Doing It Scared

What would you do if fear no longer stood in your way? 

This is the basis for Ruth Soukup's new book, do it scared.

I started this book the week my summer vacation began, after seeing it on a friend's social media feed. This friend recently made the bold move to up and purchase a building and open a business. Damn! So yeah, if she's reading stuff like this, then I wanted in, because obviously it packs a punch! And illustrates what is, to me, the best thing about social media - sharing the good stuff!

And let's face it, how often are we not doing what it is we really want to do because it's just too scary? Because we might not succeed. We might fall flat on our faces. Get hurt. Be laughed at. End up in debt. Or, have our entire life change in a much better way. Have it all work out. Watch everything we wanted come together in that beautiful, magical plan the universe always had for us, once we could let go of fear and allow it all to unfold. Because truth is, sometimes the fear of things working out, the fear of  how life might change as a result of that, the fear of just taking an unknown path, it can hold us back as much as the fear of failure... if not more. So we don't even try. We make other choices and tell ourselves this is happiness. We hover in the safe zone.
Until that blows up in our face too, because safe zones have expiration dates, but regret doesn't.

An excerpt from do it scared

Soukup addresses in the work the archetypes of fear, and I recognized myself in a couple. Namely 'The Excuse Maker," and I'm not proud of that, but I also saw bit of myself in a few other archetypes as well. You can take your own assessment here, and I do recommend doing it. There's so much to engage with on her site in addition to reading the book. But I must warn you, if you are a person who battles the grand demon of  "but what if...." then this book has the potential to be life changing. Because as Will Smith's character states in his famous After Earth speech, "Danger is very real. But fear is a choice. We are all telling ourselves a story. And that day, mine changed."

Last week, my story changed. And it's not only from reading the book, it was that little force inside that drove me to ask my friend if I could borrow it. That little voice inside, that's courage. It's not always a bold roar. It's more often the quite little voice that leads us to embark on every single decision we make that carries with it even the tiniest bit of risk, risk that the end result won't meet our expectations. I could go off on another tangent here of the danger of expectations, how they take us out of the moment and prevent us from fully engaging in living...but I won't. Instead, I will end with this question...does always playing it safe really meet the expectations you have for your one and only life?

If your answer is yes, then this book may not be for you.
But if that little voice is speaking to you...
...if there's something you always wanted but have been afraid to really go after...
...if there's some dream still living inside you that you just know you need to try...
...if you handed your story over to fear at some point, and now you want to take back authorship...
then this just might be the book for you!

Happy Sunday!

Just Four Things....Reviving The Boldness Initiative Blog!

I'm an un-apologetically early riser. I make no excuses for this. By the time most people have stirred around in their beds on a Saturday morning, I have already had coffee, breakfast, made homemade bread, done the week's laundry, read a few chapters of whatever book I'm obsessed with at the time, written a letter (or two or three) and am ready to take a morning walk. This isn't, by the way, a thing that most who know me admire. It's more often met with, "What is your problem?" than it is any sense of respect. But I don't do it to be admired. I do it because I am a high-energy person who doesn't require a typical amount of sleep. Waking up early, getting a jump start on the day, being busy and active works for me. Lingering in bed for hours for no particular purpose just because it's the weekend doesn't work for me. But it's quite alright if it works for others. One of the beauties of life as an adult is, there are no rules, really, to our basic daily routines. Responsibilities, yes. Rules, no.

The other day I asked someone close to me if he recognized patterns in my behavior or his own. I was on the path of a truth, and seeking confirmation. I had recently watched Brene Brown's powerful, life-changing Call to Courage on Netflix, and was in a deeply reflective state of mind. His answer was vague and not at all what I was really asking about, but it was highly informative about the way he was feeling, what he was thinking, and what he needed in that moment. It created a whole new set of questions. Questions I could only ask myself.

There's no rules to conversation, either. But there are responsibilities. Listen. Pause. Think. Act.

It's not the acting that is the hard part. While I can easily get up before the sun rise and complete a full day's list of chores before sitting down with a second cup of coffee, it's more difficult to sit with a truth and listen to it on a soul level. To hear not only what was said, but what was left unsaid. But it always unfolds in 4 steps:

We listen.
We pause.
We think.
We act.

Four things.

I love Elephant Journal. If you don't already follow them by social media or email, 
I highly recommend!

When we put it in terms of a 3-year old's logic, it is just four things. That's easily doable, right?

Living in a bold way doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. The image that generally comes to mind is someone rushing out headfirst into to world, afraid of nothing, ready for adventures that involve a lot of risks and moving around (and generally some degree of financial security.) However, living boldy can just be about finally taking control of your life. Letting love in.  Making that career change. Moving to  your dream location with no idea what comes next. Wearing a bikini. Getting a tattoo. Giving up dairy. Driving across the country to see your family. Writing a letter to the editor and using your real name.
Or, it can be asking a question, getting a vague answer, and genuinely listening not only to the other person, but your own intuition as well. It can be taking the pause you need in order to do the thinking (and my personal favorite, the planning!) before acting. Sometimes the boldest thing we will ever do is pause. Give time, and space. For others, and for ourselves. Rushing and acting without listening, pausing or thinking isn't living boldly.
It's living foolishly.

Instagram insight from Elephant Journal again. I'm serious, find and follow!

And yeah, I've done it too, because the listening, pausing and thinking can at times be so damn difficult. For me, it's far easier to act. My living boldy at times looks like taking a time-out. Pausing. Which is so damned difficult and heart-wrenching and can look to others like I am doing nothing but eating chocolate and binge watching Netflix on the couch for 8 days straight. But it's okay.
Nothing evolves without a pause.
And I've learned two very important things about what others think of me:
1. It's none of my business.
2. They aren't thinking of me at all. They're looking at their phones.

I started this blog in 2011 to encourage myself, through through 30 days of daily writing and sharing, to overcome a soul-punching heartbreak by not retreating from the world as I was doing, but instead learning to embrace life in a bold, fierce way, incorporating more listening, pausing, thinking, and acting. I'm rebooting it, with the original posts from 2011 all in the archives, to continue sharing this message. Coming here to this space again feels like visiting an old friend, and I'm very excited about what is to come! I already have a list of post topics to share with you, including book reviews, interviews, and mind-body-wellness insights! It's my hope that through writing and sharing we can grow together, living life in a bolder way. Please comment, follow, and share. See you next week!


**Find out more about Elephant Journal here!

Bold Activism



In the beginning...first bag only half-filled at this point.

 I guess I should not be surprised that folks who drink booze while riding in cars are not especially concerned with the environment. Still, the amount of beer, liquor and wine bottles we picked up tonight did amaze me. I guess they needed to dispose of all evidence of their drinking before arriving at their destination, because let's face it, people usually can't tell if you've downed a pint or two so long as they don't see the bottles anywhere, right?

Same goes for the junk food and latte junkies, who apparently need to hide the evidence of their Mac-splurges and four dollar caffeine fixes. I can't think of any other logical reason that we found so many McDonald's bags and burger wrappers along that roadside, and the founders of Starbucks would probably cringe in horror if they knew how many of their plastic cups I picked up.

And we're nowhere near done with this small strip of wild. It's not totally wild, but it does border some wildness, wildness that we value and want to keep free of the garbage of modern society. Literally. Cleaning up the route we walk along most evenings was my son's idea, and of this, I could not be more proud. You never saw a more enthusiastic little steward of the earth as he dutifully picked up even the ickiest of the debris and tossed it into his bag. We only brought two, and filled them up quickly. And while I am proud of my son for valuing the environment and speaking for the earth, trees, and animals, I'm absolutely racked with disbelief that so  many other people simply don't.

The evening's haul...sad, isn't it?

I wonder where they learned not to care. Was it demonstrated to them by their own families, or are they just so self-absorbed that their personal needs - like having a clean car - outweigh the needs of the their community, or the environment? It's hard to say. But the good thing is that there are so, so many people - like my own child - who DO care. And who will make the effort and go the extra mile for the earth they love. On drives, my son will point out places in subdivisions where people could put community gardens. Recently, he asked me why people preferred growing grass - as in lawns - to having gardens in their yards. I smile at this suggestion, because I know there is an entire  movement going on that is encouraging people to do just that - tend gardens, not lawns. He doesn't know this...he just knows it makes more sense to grow food you can eat than it does to tend tidy neat lawns while buying produce trucked in from the other side of the continent.


Spreading soil and mulch in the community garden beds...

And I love that he's figured this out already, without having to be told, because talk is talk, nothing more. In the end, the most important things we pass on to our children are what they learn when we lead by example. Those hours I have spent in the garden; the times I picked up trash on our hiking trails; the saving of bread crusts to take to the geese and ducks; the painstaking sorting of recycling, he sees all of these little things, and little things done in the name of love for the earth become big, huge things when you are raising a child to be bold enough to care about their environment.

No one wakes up one day and decides to become an earth activist...the seed of love for the environment has to be sown, tended, watered, and encouraged to grow and grow and grow. Read more about this, and about two renown earth activists, at http://boldnessinitiative.blogspot.com/2011/04/bold-activism.html

Don't Be Afraid to Climb Mountains...



Helping cut green beans for dinner...

 We were at the check-out line when I realized I'd forgotten freezer bags. The good news was, they were right there at the end of the aisle, so I didn't have to go very far. I left my son in charge of unloading our cart, and stepped over to grab a box of freezer bags. I have about a gazillion pounds of pecans I'd picked up in my parents yard and had shelled that need to be cleaned up and stored, a time consuming task worth every effort. Walking back to the check-out, wondering when I was ever going to find time to finish the job, I nodded hello to the elderly gentleman who'd came to place in line behind us.  He was bearded and stout, with a red cap over bushy white hair and a heavy flannel jacket, jeans, and hiking boots.

"Do you climb mountains?" My son asked the man, out of the clear blue sky. He chuckled, "Why yes, I did, young man. Many of 'em, back in the day."

"Do you look for gold?" was the next question. "Well, kind of. Found a vein of silver once, but it was on government property so it didn't help me none. Loved roaming out west, though. Had me a burro for a long time. We'd go up in them hills and stay long as we could. You prospect?"

I explained to him that my father was a long time prospector, and that I'm climbed many a mountain and was taking my son on his first real climb this summer.

"Lemme tell you, tell your dad he needs to go to Yuma, out by Arizona," the old-timer went on, and told the story of a special place of legend, just somewhere between the California and Arizona borders, about 3 days on foot from Yuma, and a lot of other twists and turns and even a trailer park landmark, and if a person might find themselves in a certain place at a certain time, they'd see the opening to a treasure trove of gold that has not been seen in 100 years. "Its like another planet out there, in the desert," he said. "Like another time."

Fabulous story. And a fabulous, bold man. He was rustic and authentic, and I did not doubt a word of his tale. Before heading out, he turned to my son and smiled. "Live big, little man," he said, "and don't be afraid to climb mountains."

Later that evening, while preparing supper together, we talked about the mountain man and his story of hidden gold and trekking up and down mountains with burros. "I hope we see him again," my son said.

I do, too.

You Can Do Anything...

A friend posted the following qoute on Facebook:

"If you just look for what's right - in others, in relationships, in yourself and your journey - you'll always find it....same when looking for what's wrong."

I love this, and thought it would be a perfect jumping off point for today's post.

We do posess the power to surprise ourselves, to be bold, to take risks that change our lives and give us amazing moments.

But to everything there is a flip side...we also possess a powerful capacity to look for reasons NOT to be bold. To talk ourselves out of doing things, even when they are things we really want to do. To listen to the ones who talk us out of doing things that are too different, too far from the norm, too unlike anything THEY'VE ever done...instead of listening to the ones who tell us we are not typical, that we can do anything, that we only need to be bold enough to believe.

To be bold means to challenge yourself to live intentionally and authentically. To trust in your own wisdom and choices. To refuse to carry Fear and Control around in your psyche anymore, and to start looking for what is right in situations, instead of dwelling on what is wrong.

As the old adage goes, attitude truly is everything. Changing your thinking is a first bold step towards living a fuller, more authentic life. It can make all the difference in the world.

We are only typical if we choose to be. Be bold enough to look for more within yourself, and you'll find it.

You can do it.

You can do anything...:-)

Painting: Universe, by Amy L. Alley.

It's Always Been Inside of You....

Boldness means different things to different people at different times...but the ability to be bold is always inside of us.

We just may not have ever really wanted to, or had to, tap into it...until now.

Being bold can mean conquering a fear, like being afraid of water but learning to swim. Or it can be doing something dramatic, like adding a colorful streak of blue or purple to your hair. Or it can be mustering up the courage to express a feeling you've been holding back. It can be wearing a bathing suit you love even though you know your body isn't perfect (what is physical perfection, really?) Or it can be speaking a language you haven't mastered yet, knowing that you'll screw up a few words along the way. It can be planting a garden knowing your entire family will laugh about it because of your inability to keep houseplants alive. Or it can be taking a first step towards following a destiny you know is calling, with no certainty of what might happen beyond that very first step.

I'm including a link to a video at the end of this post. This popular singer/songwriter has said beautifully how we all posess the power to be bold. The characters portrayed in the video show how boldness means different things for different people, but it is always something to celebrate. This is, incidentally, the current favorite song for my son and I. When it comes on the radio, we both become happy, and even he can sing it word for word. When he's frustrated trying to learn a new skill, I'll tell him a few lines of it for encouragement.

It's a catchy tune and a powerful message that reminds us that being bold is not always huge, grand moments...bold moments are when we put fear aside and do what we know, for whatever reason, we simply must do...

It's a power you do possess...and as the song says, it's always been inside of you. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw

Painting: Horse in a Green Pasture, Amy L. Alley. This is the first painting I ever did, at the age of 13. No one had told me I could paint or encouraged me in any specific way to think I could...it was simply something I wanted to do. I saved up allowance money until I could buy canvas and paints, and then I just did it. I didn't wait for permission or to be told that I could. I followed my heart, and my life was never the same again! :-)