Tag: honesty

  • rising above

    “In life, many things will challenge us. It is not about whether or not we rise to them, but rather that we simply rise above.” – Hannah McPherson

    I think of obstacles in life as optional. This is because I am an escape artist of reality, most of the time. The simplest solution to every problem is to pretend it doesn’t exist. This is not great advice, as it comes with consequences and complications.

    So, don’t follow in my footsteps on that one.

    However, there is a perspective shift in there. You can always rise above a challenge. If you zoom out to the bigger picture that we are on a floating rock hurtling through space, then things seem a lot less grave in times of weakness.

    When I say weakness, what I mean is that in moments of weakness I try to remember there is no problem we cannot solve with time, patience, and effort, or at least be able to give ourselves the illusion that it has been solved until the next problem arises.

    We may not always get the outcomes we desire.

    Life has a way of bringing what is meant for you to you, but the alternative must also be true, that things not meant for you will also leave you.

    I’ve been dealing with loss, lately. As friends get older, they grow apart. I’ve been dealing with loss of my sense of self, my sense of comfort. It has been far from easy.

    This is not an abject judgement on solving problems or true pain, but it is a commentary on how we can respond to these things.

    It is easy to get bogged down in the harsh reality of our world sometimes, and the “rising above” concept talks about how we may relieve ourselves of the temporary pains we experience from not being able to process these experiences.

    Step 1. Remind yourself that everything is temporary.

    Step 2. Remind yourself that things that are forever, we have no real knowledge of, so use your most positive imagination to fill in a story that inspires you.

    Step 3. Sit with the feelings caused by challenges long enough to observe and understand what it means to you, don’t just skim the surface or keep digging when you’ve done the work.

    Step 4. Zoom out, get back to the basics, trudge through the mundane while keeping the grander scale of things in mind.

    Step 5. Allow time, patience, and effort to transform the challenge into something you can work with. Trust the process.

    Now, these are not 5 easy steps, nor are they a simple band-aid fix all for responding to problems, but they are a great start to the methodology of rising above.

    Today, I am trying to take my own advice, which is difficult. I won’t say this process has always worked for me, but when it has, it was exactly what I needed.

    Today, I am trusting the process and I hope you can too.

  • today is gentle

    “Not everything in life will be comfortable, but then again, comfort is subjective.” – Hannah McPherson

    Today, you could say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

    My dream was truly wonderful, but the moment I woke up the house was chaos.

    Now, as someone who likes it when life is gentle, today was the opposite. However, I took the opportunity to practice gratitude. I took a deep breath, said “okay, this is the moment, but this doesn’t have to last the day.”

    My new mantra today will be “Today is gentle.”

    Why? Because when your nervous system is under attack, there is no stopping the discomfort and displaced feeling until you’ve convinced yourself that you will be okay.

    I’m already bracing for “the worst day ever” in my mind, so by introducing this mantra, I am telling my body to stop bracing for pain and start embracing the possibility of miracles.

    By miracles, I mean an easy day at work, I mean problem resolution without strenuous effort, I mean things turning in the right direction after a little disruption.

    In doing this, my entire demeanor will change from being on guard and in panic state to something softer and more open. I will be attracting these good things with my own mentality.

    Instead of worrying over every outcome, I will be accepting and loving towards myself and others so that positivity can shine through, even if things are hard.

    We create our own comfort.

    Today could go either way, but I have a feeling it will go much better if I change my own mind about how it turns out ahead of time.

    If you ever have a hard morning, don’t let it sully the endless possibilities of the rest of the day. There is beauty in it all, even in the discomfort. It is our job to find the beauty and bring it into our perspective, in order to keep from being swallowed by all the harshness of life.

    As someone who values feeling safe, snuggled, and cozy; life rarely offers this opportunity without a little effort on our part. Don’t be afraid of the effort it takes to regulate yourself, because on the other side, there is comfort waiting.

    The song attached is about always reaching for the next great thing. It came on as I wrote this post.

    I wrote it about our need to find our next happy moment, our next success, our next plateau. In waves, there are troughs and crests, we always want to be at the crest, but when in the troughs, we forget that we are bound to rise again.

    It is important to remember that it is all part of the process, and the pain will pass.

    “There is always a new horizon, there is always another for finding.” – Hannah McPherson

    The song also talks about how we find that next horizon on the other side of a hard choice, but sometimes the hard choice is the guiding light of loving yourself enough to get through discomfort.

    It mentions that there is no way to heal your mind, because the thing is you’ll always need healing. Healing is a task you come back to over and over for different things, or the same thing, but you’ll always want it and need it. The key is to grow through it. The key is to keep showing up.

    This song stood out to me because it was originally written about my writing journey and where I’m at in my career, keeping up with my household, growing up in all sense of the word and where I thought my life would be.

    Here’s the thing: it will always require work and that work may not always be comfortable, but if I stay true to myself and take care of my needs, working out those goals is totally reachable. Once they’re complete, I’ll have new goals. So, the process will start again.

    Which leads me to the cover image: subjective comfort. What is comfortable to you, may not be comfortable to someone else. You have to find your own vision for comfort. Whatever it looks like to you, it is up to you to attain it. The world is not set up to freely give comfort, though we are sometimes rarely gifted with a kind gesture, it still comes at the cost of the giver.

    You are always the first option for being the giver of your own comfort. When no one else is offering it, offer it to yourself.

  • Today’s Self vs. The Cosmic Self

    “If you look at the small picture, you’ll see ‘Today’s Self’. If you look at the big picture, you’ll see your ‘True Self’.” – Hannah McPherson

    I was lying in bed last night running through all the scenarios in my head of how the day went, trying to go to sleep. Then, I remembered I am a being made of stardust and I have a whole cosmic journey. Sweating over the smallest things takes away from the biggest picture.

    Each day, we are new. Each day, we take on a new set of experiences, challenges, and memories. However, when you zoom out to the whole – we have an entire lifetime of those.

    Now, unless you’re a savant, you probably don’t remember every single day of your life – even ones you thought were the most important day ever, or alternatively the worst day ever.

    Some part of you will keep that knowledge, but your day to day “Today Self” will not.

    Now, the “True Self” or what I like to call the “Cosmic Self” will remember. It is my hope when we end our time here, we get to review it all and recall what we have lost in the sauce of everyday existence.

    Until then, I’m aiming to paint the whole experience, not just today. I’m determined to paint a picture so grand and colorful that it will fill me with joy and surprise at all I did and forgot about.

    So, with that in mind, I’ll refer to how I started this thought last night: I cannot get so caught up in how today went, that I forget to get excited about how my whole entire life will go.

    My message to you is this: “Today’s Self” whether it was the best version, the worst version, or somewhere in between, is just a small fractal of the “Cosmic Self” – and all of it is wholly and one hundred percent you. You are able to look in whichever magic mirror you want to, at any time, free of charge. I recommend looking through the mirror that is most true to you.