What's Worth Doing?

A friend posted a quote by Brene Brown today:

"What's worth doing even if I fail?"

Isn't that a wonderful question?

Here's what I decided.

Even if I fail by some standards, completion is success. Not giving up is success. Being brave is success. Trying new things and taking creative risks is success.

Failure is so RELATIVE.

I want to finish my book.

I want to be a wonderful mother.

I want to be a loyal friend.

I want to have a beautiful spirit.

I want to keep building Live Art.fully.

I want to FLY in my own way.

I want to bear pain and illness with strength.

I want to always be Brave Enough.

I never want to stop growing.

I want to inspire.

What do you want? What's worth the effort to you? How do you define success?

True North

Ribbons of the new and unexpected wind in and around normal rhythms. Life isn't static, and as such, you would think I would learn to expect the unexpected. Somehow change still catches me off guard.

I find myself without a map right now. In a place I haven't been before. Perhaps you find yourself in a similar place.

Disoriented, I sit on the edge of my bed at night and journal, determined to use my compass to find true north. My husband walks in and snaps a picture as he says, "Look at you live artfully." {It's a bit of a joke around here.}

I'm a chatterbox, but very much an introvert. A few years ago I dubbed myself an "Expressive Introvert." I have a deep inner thought life. I process everything. Then I have to express it, somehow, in order to fully process my experience.

Change is hard for introverts. I am a creature who cherishes and tries to protect stability. Even when my life looks the same from the outside, if there are elements of change within, I feel it like waves rippling beneath a sailboat.

So it's vital for me to have a true north I can find when I feel blown about on rippling tides or rough seas.

I'm thinking a lot these days about my true north. What that is. What points me right-side-up, feeds me, returns me to what I know to be true about myself and life. Maybe this resonates with you. Maybe, like me, you just needed the words for this feeling so that you could begin identifying all of the things, people, places, beliefs that make up your compass.

Find your true north.

Willingness to Grow

"Allow events to change you:
You have to be willing to grow.
Growth is different from something that happens to you.
You produce it.
You live it.
The prerequisites for growth:
the openness to experience events
and the willingness
to be changed by them."
 {Bruce Man}

The Story of Live Art.fully

The year I turned 30, between two trials in my life, I adopted a way of looking at the world. It is a perspective, if you will, that is much more than two words can contain. I dubbed it Live Art.fully.

To Live Art.fully, bare bones, is to live fully, using art. But how do you live fully? And what if you're not an artist? Then what?

I spent most of my life convincing myself I was not an artist. I was creative, yes. I was a writer, or at least wanted to be. I doodled, wrote poetry, and scribbled endlessly in spiral bound books. I read voraciously. I loved hearing people's stories and at times, liked to tell my own, especially through the medium of writing. I loved drama & acting. I dabbled in music, learning three musical instruments and singing, but mastering none. I liked taking pictures. Through school, personal, and professional endeavors, I learned elements of design, layout, formatting, writing, editing, and publishing.

But I was not, absolutely not, an artist.

What I have learned is that what I do, all those outlets of creativity, is art. My life is an artful life.

Everyone faces obstacles in their lives, some more than others, and everyone has their own tragedies. I am not exempt from that, and have experienced many things in my life that were painful. You have read about some of them in previous posts.

What I learned, and still learn nearly daily, is that growth is a choice. We can take these hard things and let them help us grow. It's not easy. It's not pain-free. It's very difficult sometimes. But I can use my...

courage

resilience

honesty

positivity

faith

writing & art

...to heal, to grow, to process, to learn, to truly live an artful, authentic life.

If and when I fall, I get up. And so do you.

Bumper Cars and Spaghetti

The thoughts in my mind today are like bumper cars. Just as I focus on one, another comes from behind to jar it out of the way, leaving a bit of whiplash. Knowing where to begin to process and learn is like searching for the end of the spaghetti noodle in a twirly heap of saucy mess. Here is my attempt at separating out some spaghetti and making the bumper cars stand still for just a moment.

Never underestimate the value of parents.

Never underestimate the value of the family we choose.

Never underestimate the power of words ... how they can inspire, lift up, tear down, and create that "aha" moment that helps us understand ourselves and our tragedies and victories.

Learn to apologize when necessary and forgive when necessary and let it all go, knowing that the good always outweighs the bad, and life is always worth living.

Appreciate the balance of good and bad, effortless and difficult. For it's when the hard comes that we more fully appreciate the easy.

Always value life. Know that every year will bring new goodness and new heartbreaks and it will all offer lessons.

Search out and celebrate the small things, like a steaming cup of tea, or the daily requests of a sweet 4 year-old for morning pots of healthy oatmeal, dotted with fruit and cream. The heaping baskets of warm clean clothes, the perfect shade of lipstick, the lingering hug and the laughter that slips out unbidden.

Life is a grand gift, and the hard times help us learn, help us grow, help us become.

So write your story. Sing your song. Make your mark. There is only one you. And remember too, that you influence those around you, so guard your words and your actions and focus on the building up, which is always its own reward.

Never take for granted the people and the abilities of today. It is all a gift.

Releasing the Past

Words, and how we use them, help define our experiences. The language we use has the power to trap or free us. I want to begin identifying my problem words and replacing them with language that still holds a positive connotation for me, so I can go into situations freed to embrace the experience, not trapping myself into the same box as past journeys have been stored. This concept has the potential to evoke change over the past, the present, and the future.

Past hurts, sorted through and re-processed using new language, may well be released or forgiven, leaving behind peace and freedom. Unintentional hurts, for example, hold less power for me than intentional hurts. If in my reexamination of something in my past that hurt me, I come to the conclusion that my wounds were secondary to someone else's (their hurt caused them to hurt me), my compassion for their pain can help erase mine.

Learning these tools is Drivers Ed for trauma. Once educated, I can give my traumas license to take their leave. They can pack their baggage and hit the road.