Today Is a New Day to Try Again

This week I was planning on writing about Mercury Retrograde (which started yesterday), but that changed this morning. So here we go.

**A little back story for those that don’t know me. Back in 2005 my Mom died unexpectedly on March 7th at the age of 53 and her funeral was on March 10th which is my Dad’s birthday (he died in 2001 of colon cancer)**

Truth time: Today has been tough (I've been up since 3am). No idea why some years around this time are harder than others, but they are and this year seems to be one of them. Which is surprising because the holidays were not that difficult last year. Or maybe that is why the first of March is hard this year. The Universe gave me a pleasant holiday season in 2018 in exchange for a shitty first part of March 2019. If memory serves me correct, my holidays in 2017 were beyond terrible but my first of March in 2018 was great. I digress….

On the way to school this morning my mind was running 90 to nothing thinking about how crappy things are this time of year, how hard it was to climb out of bed this morning, yadda yadda. Then my son randomly says "Mom, today is a new day to try again". Wow. Mega truth bomb from the Universe/my Spirit Guides/God/What have you. So, let that sink in for a minute. Today is a new day to try again.

TODAY IS A NEW DAY TO TRY AGAIN.

Now, I’m not a big rah-rah motivational poster person. However, you know what? My old soul, little man is right. Today IS a new day to try again. Each day is a brand new day to start over and try to accomplish what we didn't yesterday. The key word is TRY. I always tell my son that, when it comes to school and his work, the most important thing is that he try his best. The same thing applies to us and life. The most important thing is that we try. Life doesn’t have to be Pinterest perfect. The important thing is that we keep going and we keep trying. Remember: it may be a winding, twisting, hilly journey with random fire swamps, but we always come out on the other side.

Now I’m not going to sit here and say getting out of bed and trying again is easy, because it’s not. Getting up out of bed some days is the hardest thing you’ll do. However, we do it because staying in bed, for most of us, is not an option. Kids have to get to school, we have to get to work, etc. **Disclaimer: Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that there are people out there with legit depression who literally cannot get out of bed; I’ve been there and done that. While this applies to you in a way too, this is also a judgement free zone. You do what you have to do to heal, even if that is staying in bed all day.**

One of the biggest lessons I learned after my Mom died was that no matter what we are feeling, the world keeps moving and spinning. It doesn’t stop to give us time to grieve and/or heal. I wish it would. How nice would that be to be able to hit the pause button on life long enough to get our shit together? Then once shit has been put back together we could hit resume. However, I also wonder, for some at least, if that would make the problem worse instead of better.

Take me, for example, if I was able to hit the pause button, I would probably never hit the resume button. Come to think of it, I actually did do that for awhile after my Mom died. I hit the pause button right after she died and it stayed paused for about 6 weeks. I stayed with family in Tennessee during that time and tried to heal. However, it was around the end of April that I realized that hitting that pause button almost made things worse instead of better. Bills piled up, I still had her stuff to go through, I had to get back to work, etc. I also realized that leaving it paused would make things better and that I had to get back to living. The way we get back to living is with coping mechanisms.

Everyone has different coping mechanisms and most of us use a combination of those mechanisms. Some of us can just flip a switch and move on (at least for that day). Some of us need counseling, medicine, a friend support system, etc. None of these mechanisms are wrong or bad, just different (remember judge-free zone because I’ve used quite a few). **Another disclaimer: some coping mechanisms can cause other problems, so choose your mechanism wisely.**

It would be so nice if we all could just flip that switch, but it’s okay if we can’t. It’s okay to ask for help and to seek help. All of our brains are wired differently. We are literally all different people. What works for me will, most likely, not work for you. What works for you, most likely won’t work for the person down the block. The important thing is that we keep striving toward what works best for us and we keep trying.

Remember, “Today is a new day to try again”. It doesn’t matter if it’s something big or small.

Trying to eat healthy & exercise and failed miserable yesterday? Today is a new day to try again.

Stayed in bed because it was just too hard to move and get up? Today is a new day to try again.

Trying to quit smoking and smoked half a pack yesterday? Today is a new day to try again.

Keep trying. It does better. I promise.

Word of the Year

At the beginning of each year I choose a word for that year. What is a word for the year? It’s a word or phrase that I have chosen to be my focus for the upcoming year. Most of the time that focus is done subconsciously and without my active participation. Call it the Universe, my Spirit Guides, etc. but somehow it is chosen and then ends up manifesting itself throughout that year.

For me, the process of choosing usually involves some type of meditation. I find a quiet place or go on a quiet walk to let my mind wander and let the Universe speak to me. As I’m doing this meditation, an idea will keep popping into my mind and it will just seem to fit. Sounds hokey, I know, but it works. Some people choose to take a more conscious or pro-active approach to selecting a term and actually pick what they want to work on for the upcoming year. Kind of a goal of sorts.

Last year I chose “balance”. I learned a lot last year with it. One of the biggest lessons I learned was how to balance work, family, home, etc. My family and I had two major changes last year that helped with this lesson. We finally sold our house (after almost completely renovating it and it being on the market for quite awhile) and moved to a new one, but I also got the opportunity to join a local wellness collective and move my office back outside the home. Going from working full time, to being a stay at home mom, to working retail part time, to doing my business inside the home along with a part time bookkeeping job, and then finally doing my business outside my home full time was a fun transition. This transition taught me a lot about balancing how much time I spent at the office and how much time I spent at home with my family and on self care. It’s a hard, delicate balance especially for someone who tends to be a workaholic that is trying to grow her business. Let’s just say that this word is going to be an ongoing lesson for me.

This year my word is "growth". When this word first manifested itself to me at the end of last year I admit that it excited me. A lot. Being a small business owner, the word “growth” holds so much potential and promise. Well, we are only 50ish days into the new year and I'm already seeing this word manifesting itself in my life, but not in the way I had thought. Oh, sure, my business is growing and I’m getting busier. So I am seeing growth in my business. However, I never imagined I would be experiencing personal growth like I have.

Don’t get me wrong. I was expecting to grow in other ways besides my business. I have lots of learning growth that I want to do. I want to finish a couple of courses I enrolled in a couple years ago, study new subjects that have peaked my interest, etc. However, learning growth is one thing, but personal growth is something entirely different. Personal growth is also the more difficult growth. It is the growth that we may not want to do and it can sometimes be downright painful. Once that growing is done we may be a little worse for wear, but we come out on the other side a better person.

Don’t misunderstand me, I also would be naive if I said I didn’t expect to have some personal growth happen this year. I'm almost 39 years young and I feel that, especially with the life experiences I’ve had (maybe we’ll get into that in a later post), I’ve had a lot of personal growth. Yet, there is ALWAYS personal growth that can happen. Life lessons that are forced upon us by the Universe, whether we want to learn them or not.

So far this year, I have mainly been on an adventure of personal growth. Lately that personal growth has included learning self love and a huge dose of learning not to give a fuck about what people think of me, my business, and how I live my life. The latter is the one I really wasn’t expecting to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I THOUGHT I gave zero fucks about what people thought about me and my business, but I was SO wrong. Your beautiful reality is left intact until that shit is thrown in your face and you really have to give those cares to the wind in order to maintain some semblance of sanity. Afterward, you are left picking up the pieces and trying to put them together into a new realty. This realty, in the long run, will be for the better.  But, until that better happens, you feel lost and little (okay, a lot) hurt.

Do I want my 2019 experiences to discourage you from choosing a word? Hell no because that type of shit would have happened anyways. At least I can chalk it up to growth and know that it is all apart of my journey for the year.

Even though March is almost here, I challenge you to choose a word for the year if you already haven't. It's so amazing seeing it manifest throughout the year. It helps tie together instances that would otherwise seem like a random shit show and gives you something to look back on at the end of the year. I also challenge you to keep some type of log or journal relating to this word or phrase. It gives you something tangible to flip through at the end of the year to help reflect on everything that happened on your journey.

Remember, everyone has a different way of choosing that word or phrase and, the best part, there is no wrong way of choosing it. I hope you will share what yours is in the comments and maybe even some of your experiences so far this year.