Today I Give Myself Permission to Reflect on the #atozchallenge

You know that feeling you get when your sweet cousin Myrtle, the one that talks all the time, finally departs your place? That feeling of immediate relief but with a sense that something is now missing?

Well, that’s exactly how I feel now that the Challenge is over. When I put the last full stop on my Z post, I felt nothing but relief. Now, a few days later I’m missing the structure and the creative impetus the Challenge provided. I have seen that some of my fellow participants have jumped right back in feet first to partake in a challenge involving a post a day in May. There is much to be admired about such blogging stamina. Good luck to all the intrepid bloggers who have decided to take that plunge.

Having participated in last year’s Challenge I knew what I had to do to maximise the time I had to visit other bloggers participating in the Challenge. Of course, I did none of them, not because I wasn’t prepared to, but in the end that experience felt too clinical. There’s a real buzz and energy that is generated from watching the posts of that day’s letter go up one by one. A veritable post string linked by the letter of the day, the desire to create and achieve punctuated only by differences in time zones. So to all my fellow WordPress uses who were involved in the Challenge thanks for the motivation and the inspiration.

I went through a few incantations of my Challenge theme before deciding on permissions and even explored some possibilities with my poor hapless family members. Needless to say, they would have liked to give me permission to stop turning every family gathering into a research focus group and just get dinner on the table. And then, a funny thing happened on the way to the letter Z. What started as 26 posts to fulfill a blogging challenge ended up as an online journal chronicling my own personal growth story over the last 18 months. This is the first time I have ever written any of this down and whatever else the posts might be or end up being, they have served as an affirmation of sorts.

During the course of the Challenge, I met many great bloggers from all over the sphere writing in various niches. Some were experienced bloggers partaking in their second or third Challenges, other were new to blogging. Some were not participating in the Challenge at all and still managed to stumble on my blog. All of them enriched my Challenge experience. Thank you to everyone who visited, commented, liked or read – permission granted to come by any time you like and continue to raise that curtain.

The Challenge also had another dimension this year and that was my role as Arlee Bird’s Challenge Ambassador. It is no hardship to spread Challenge goodwill as I have a strong belief in its premise and benefits. I did notice on my travels that a few bloggers threw in the Challenge towel after the first week or so, thinking that as they had missed one post there was no point in continuing. The Challenge is about creating and achieving and whilst there is a schedule it is not so inflexible that you can’t make up a post or two or three. It’s such a shame to drop out after only missing one or two posts. Please don’t be discouraged, just keep writing and posting, posting and writing.

Finally a big thank you to Arlee Bird, the other Challenge hosts and my fellow Challenge Ambassadors for imparting your knowledge and creating a sense of camaraderie around the event. It remains a terrific concept and vehicle and I’ll be back for another round.

Today I Give Myself Permission to Be Zealous #atozchallenge

Do you ever sit and watch young children who have just learned to toddle? They are a study in energy and zeal. Determined to exercise their new found freedom, they approach their mobility with gusto and wonder (or probably more appropriately wander if you have ever tried to keep a toddler under control whilst carrying a baby).

So what happens to our zeal as we grow up?

One of the merits of growing up is the loss of some of our naivety. However the loss tends to come at a price and that is a tempering of our enthusiasm. You’re probably thinking that this is because as adults the number of first times we experience drops dramatically and too often we travel down the “been there, done that” road. I don’t buy this. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder so too is zeal in the eye of the enthusiast.

We humans can rationalise just about anything and any situation. Justification for just about any decision is usually only a stones throw away. If you really don’t want to go somewhere or do something it’s relatively easy to rationalize that decision – it’s too cold, too hot, to dry, too wet, too far, too noisy, too crowded, too fast, too slow, too long too short, too expensive, too difficult, too easy, too… We all have to do things we would rather not. But dragging our backsides and chins on the ground only adds undue weight and resistance to the exercise and is self-defeating. By doing so we are limitng our potential to be wowed and limiting the payback we can receive from the experience – whether that’s learning something new, meeting someone new or experiencing a new sensation.

Trying to teach this concept to a child is one of the hardest things to do. Teaching it to an adult is nigh impossible.

But the old adage of “you get out what you put in” is so true.

Life is like landing a plane. It’s all in the approach. Approach something with a sense of wonder, commitment and energy and chances are you will end up with something more than you started and not just a headache or a big bill. If something is worth my time, it’s worth my zeal.

I’m that adult toddler, approaching my new found freedom with wonder and gusto.

Thank you for sharing some or all of the journey by allowing me to chronicle it in my A to Z Challenge 2013 posts. For all of you who took the time to comment or like my posts, I truly appreciate your zeal. You have helped me reflect just how far I have come. And I needed to do that.

Today I give myself permission to be zealous and not blog tomorrow.

Today I Give Myself Permission to be Xenial #atozchallenge

Since well before the start of the Challenge, I knew this letter was always going to be …challenging, especial after the gauntlet was thrown down.

A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune of having lunch with a friend who also blogs. She has chosen the dark side for her blogging platform, but I won’t hold that against her. We got to talking about the Challenge and she threw it down, right there in the middle of the bistro where we had decided to dine. The gauntlet. She bet me that I couldn’t come up with a real X word to write about noting that words like eXcited or eXternal were ruled out. My friend blogs at Annals from a Citrus Grove In the Suburbs, and has chosen Australian icons for her Challenge theme. Today she blogged about XXXX Beer (pronounced fourex beer) and I can’t help thinking that the gauntlet has found its way to the right place. Anyway, I tend to have a thing for picking up gauntlets and I just couldn’t let this one go.

That’s the back story to why I’m being xenial today. Like all good hosts and in keeping with the theme for today’s post I wish to make you comfortable and to feel welcome. So here’s a cup of coffee for you to enjoy and an ottomon or three for you to put your feet up.

Let me show you the fun welcome mats I found during my research for this post.

My house is certainly ecstatic judging by these standards and isn’t it always nice to peg expectations up front?

I think my favorite though is knock, knock because it’s such a classic and classically simple and I’m totally bummed that I didn’t think of it first.

But getting back to being xenial, I have spent the weekend getting the spare room ready to host a friend from interstate next week for a couple of nights. We will be going to a much awaited concert on Friday night and shooting the breeze and just spending time together.

And as a final tidbit, I will leave you with this little gem that you always wanted to know, but just wasn’t aware of until now – the Hotel Xenial can be found in Biratnagar, Nepal and has been rated as the best choice in Biratnager by Tripadvisor. If you’re in the area, drop by, if only to take a photo of the name.

Time to go and fluff up the welcome mat.

Today I give myself permission to be Xenial.

Today I Give Myself Permission to be Vulnerable #atozchallenge

There is no doubt that I have been on a journey to accept vulnerability, for to understand vulnerability and cease fearing it requires maturity, wisdom and insight.

Coinciding with a lightbulb moment along this journey, I discovered the wonderful work of Brene Brown. Brene calls herself a storyteller/researcher and for the past decade she has studied the concept of vulnerability. You can read more about her work at her website, here. In 2010 Brene presented her landmark talk on the power of vulnerability at the annual TED conference and the video has since had more than nine million hits. You can find it here.

Brene’s presentation confirmed much of what I had come to understand about my own vulnerability.

I’m not sure where it came from, for my father was not particularly macho, but my firm belief up until my late thirties was that vulnerability represented weakness and was to be avoided at all costs. I suppose hand in hand with that philosophy was that if connections happened then all well and good, but essentially that was only a bi-product of getting a job done. This worked for me for about a decade and a half as I focused my energies in making it in the business world. Looking back at that time, it worked because I backed my business skills and didn’t feel any real risk in putting those skills out there. I knew I was the real deal and had the goods to prove it.

But, and this is a big but, it’s not what I was doing in my personal life. For some reason, I didn’t back myself in that sphere, spent a lot of time seeking approval and my personal connections suffered. So having woken up I went on a quest to strengthen my existing personal connections and to better understand how to make succesful connections. As Brene says in the video, humans are hard-wired for connection, it gives purpose and meaning to our lives. To show you how far I have come, I have no shame in admiting I had little clue about connections back then. Those I had were principally because the other people were great connectors and to them I am eternally grateful for deciding to invest in me and for teaching me about vulnerability.

I now know and understand that to connect you have to make yourself vulnerable. You have to go forth in the world with your authentic self without any guarantee that you will be accepted and not get hurt. Authenticity was never the issue, but rather the making of the first move. I have since come to understand that not everyone will accept you, but if they do not then firstly, it says more about them than you and secondly, these experiences teach you courage.

Type A alpha personalities have never been at the top of my list. Although probably a gross over generalisation, most alphas I have encountered are quite scared underneath. This results in some undesirable behaviours and the energy required to keep up the alpha front must be tremendous. Give me a guy or girl with a quiet strength who is not afraid to show their vulnerability or who is prepared to make themselves vulnerable by acknowledging the contribution of others and I’ll take them any day of the week over the alpha types. To me there is an attractiveness in vulnerability, probably because it comes from a place of authenticity rather than bravado. Vulnerability speaks and is an ingredient of commonality. How many times have you been in a situation where you have been introduced to someone and once you get talking they admit to some small imperfection or action that was ineffective and you immediately feel closer to that person? I have many times, for usually I think if he or she sounds too good to be true, he or she probably is.

In her video, Brene mentions the struggle with vulnerability and that most people deal with it by numbing their emotions. The problem as she points out is that you can’t selectively just numb the bad emotions, by numbing you end up muting joy, gratitude and happiness as well. And how do we numb? As Brene points out we do it by:

trying to make the uncertain, certain – think religion and politics
perfecting, for example our bodies, our children – our job as parents is not to give them a perfect life, but to prepare them to deal with an imperfect life
pretending that what we do does not affect others

I have since chosen to be prepared to make the first move in forming a connection, without any guarantee of success. I’d rather chance a negetive response than become comfortable in my disconnectedness. I’d also rather chance the relationship ending than never having the opportunity to have it in the first place.

I therefore choose risk, mess and vulnerability and by doing so I choose to add grey and colour to my life over only black and white and feeling over numbness.

Today, I give myself permission to be vulnerable.

Today I Give Myself Permission to Trust #atozchallenge

Trust is a five letter word. I suppose it could have been a four letter word, but then it would have been RUST and we probably all have enough of that.

We have all probably also had enough of deception and of pain when our trust in someone or something has been broken. I know I have.

And yet…

The idea of never trusting again holds little appeal. For trust is an essential ingredient to connecting on more than a superficial level. It begins in childhood with the whole ‘I”ll show you mine, if you show me yours” concept and evolves as we mature to “I’ll share with you mine, if you share with me yours”. And when there’s true sharing, the trust and the endorphins flow. Trust is a cornerstone of not only social relationships but also of business relationships as embodied in notions such as the trusted advisor and the trustee steed. Where would the Loan Ranger have been without Silver? Possibly Hi Hoed, but very much stationary.

Trusting means opening up your life so that others can enter. As the saying goes, a life without trust is the ultimate prison. And I truly believe this. Storming the Bastille can be hard and unforgiving work.

So, today I give myself permission to:

Trust the moment…

…for worry never solved anything and only gives you frown lines

Trust in God…

…all others must pay cash

Trust my instincts…

…because my tummy tells me so

Trust in Ellen…

…because she says funny stuff like “People always ask me “Were you funny as a child? Well, no, I was an accountant.” And child accountants are very trustworthy not to mention, funny

Trust the path I’m on…

…or that I have the ability to switch to another one if it turns out to be a deadend

Trust in my authenticity…

…because keeping it real is the cornerstone of connection

Trust the internet bloggers…

…to provide some creative quality distraction.

Today I Give Myself Permission to be Patient #atozchallenge

It’s hard to believe that we have already arrived at P on the permission list. It’s another one of the big ones. and it took a conversation with a friend this morning to remind me of it. Up until that time, I was ready to give myself permission to be playful. It actually doesn’t take much to make me playful because I love a good laugh and a bit of innocent mischief. And there’s nothing like bonding over playful banter. True friends engage in banter, it’s the elixir of relationships. At least in my world.

But for the purposes of today’s post I’m going to focus on patience, because for most of us it’s harder to achieve than playfulness.

Before reaching this stage of life, I always thought that the older one became, the more impatient one got. In fact, I probably saw it as a benefit of older age, as a bi-product of the freedom of not having to impress. It’s amazing how one’s perspective changes as the reality of being of middle age sets in.

As a younger person, I never had any patience for patience – didn’t see the value or the need for it. I’m not talking about the patience needed for waiting for a bus or for a movie to open or a book to be released. Never having been one to stand there impatiently looking at my watch, I used that time to people watch or distract myself with other things. However, having made a decision, I used to go for it and go for it hard.

Now, not so much. Not because the hunger is any different, but now I see the value in picking my moment and scoping out the landscape.

This holds especially true for any area that involves relationships and friendships. Too often, we get blinded from the relentless pursuit of our own agenda and our own needs and fail to see that the other person is not quite on the same page. By pushing ahead with too much haste, we often burn our chance at the brass ring. And often we don’t get another shot, although we think we might.

It has been said that patience is the companion of wisdom. And I see that now. For it is hard to engage in patience or see the value of being patient without that hard fought wisdom. Over the past few years I’ve had many people come into my life to teach me the lesson of patience and frankly, my children have been trying to teach me the lesson over the past eighteen years. Quite honestly, there is no better teacher of patience than your own child or spouse. The lessons are never easy, but they are essential if we are to have the skills necessary to find happiness in the second act. For patience with ourselves is just as critical as patience with others and will become even more critical as time marches on.

We owe it to ourselves to give us the time and space we need to master new skills, obtain new outlooks and make the changes necessary to orient ourselves to a new direction. You cannot turn the Titanic around on a dime. And to turn the Titanic you will need patience and lots of it.

And people who are meant to come to you or back to you, will. As someone I know is fond of saying, what is meant for you will not pass you by – truly.

Is patience something you struggle with? What’s the best lesson in patience you have ever received?

Today I give myself permission to be patient

Today I Give Myself Permission to Embrace Originality #atozchallenge

We are all born an original, each leaving behind the broken mould of our birth. However, as most of us grow and travel through our teenage years we start to see that originality is perhaps the harder road to hoe, at least for a child, and the drive to fit in overtakes us. We then move onto our adult years carrying that need to fit in. This time though the stakes may be a little higher, with a promotion, bank loan, long-term relationship or a business opportunity at stake.

For some brave souls who turn their noses at societal pressure, the original child becomes the highly original, memorable and successful adult. The one that you secretly now admire and envy for having the courage to march to the beat of his or her own drummer. Rhetoric abounds, but in my experience the corporate world does not value originality or if it does, it is confined to originality in ideas and not in respect of individual attributes.

Dark suits, business shirts and black pumps have been my business wardrobe staples for the past two decades. But a look a little closely and you will see a few of my salutes to originality.

Let me start by saying I was born without the accessorizing gene. Really, I am accessory challenged. I’d love to be able to tell you that I solved my originality conundrum with funky jewellery, fantastically memorable earrings, unique handbags and sexy scarves. However that would be misleading and probably a little boring.

In the early nineties when I first stated work, original males wore funky ties to work. How I loved those ties filled with amusing cartoon characters, Snoopy was a favourite. Sometimes, the guys actually engaged in an originality double act by also wearing funky character or slogan socks.Perhaps they only wore them out of deference to the tastes and gift giving activities their spouses, but whatever the reason they brightened my day.

Remember these? Guys had it easy in the originality stakes.

I clearly couldn’t get away with either, so my ode to originality came in the form of the Swatch.

The Swatch is a wonderful invention of Swiss ingenuity, not only that, it actually tells time! Love them, the more colourful the better. I’ve owned at least one Swatch for the past twenty years. A splash of colour under the dark suits and a small window into my personality. I wonder what our choice of watch says about us? Over the years, I have received many positive remarks about my choice of watch, not only for the colour but also for the kooky designs. Rainbows, fish, falling numbers, stars and moons I have had them all.

English: Swatch Flik Flak Fifa World Cup Spain Edition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More recently, my originality push has extended to the Converse shoe. I purchased my first pair a couple of weeks ago and have since worn them to work. I am told they are very me – a pair of purple high tops with small white flowers over them. Love the funk factor and the surprise on people’s faces when they see them on my feet. Didn’t expect that, did you? Sweeeeeee!

Not mine, but rates high on the originality factor

As time marches on, the need to conform is waning and it is so liberating. I plan to continue to celebrate originality in others and embrace it in myself. Middle age is a great time to try the new and experiment with identity and it is full of possibilities. It is probably no coincidence that a lot of women this age obtain a tattoo, a permanent sign of originality. Whilst I’m not tempted by tattoos for my own body, I applaud those who decide to express their originality and individuality in that way.

Fortune favours the brave and the original.

What do you do to embrace your originality?

Today I give myself permission to embrace originality.

Today I Give Myself Permission to Do Nothing #atozchallenge

Today I give myself permission to do….

NOTHING

NADA

ZIP

ZERO

NIL

NIX

ZILCH

BUGGER ALL (Aussie vernacular meaning… nothing)

SFA

NOUGHT

What’s your perfect idea of doing nothing?

Today I give myself permission to do nothing.

Today I Give Myself Permission to Matter #atozchallenge

Self esteem can be a fickle beast. Some have it then lose it, some don’t have it then find it, some never have it and some have an abundance of it. Yet others use the lack of it as an excuse for all that is not right with their world.

We are all at different points in the spectrum. We will also be at differing points during the course of our lives. Traditionally, middle age is associated with a dip in self esteem. It is said that this is the time when women enter the invisible stage. But I’m not buying it. I may yet be proven wrong, but for now, I refuse to don the cloak of invisibility. I refuse to accept that I no longer matter.

A couple of months ago there was a great article in one of our Sunday supplements about a 46 year old women who recounted her recent experiences with dating. She had four children and told the story of how she had no shortage of dates. In fact she had dated approximately six men in the last four months and put it down to an inner confidence and not shying away from opportunities to meet people. In the article she lamented that in the media there were a lot more stories of women at that age bemoaning the passing of youth and complaining of feeling invisible. She is right. In preparing for this Challenge, I looked for material in our mainstream media which painted middle age in a positive light. I wanted to be inspired by stories of women who had found themselves at this age, changed an unhappy direction or otherwise took control of their lives. Apparently, this does not sell newspapers.

So what sort of message are we sending middle-aged women? With the push into fifty and the change in demographic, apparently our spending power doesn’t matter, at least not to advertisers. Our looks clearly don’t matter, unless they are used to compare or contrast with youth.

The fact of the matter is (no pun intended) we all matter. And the main person to whom we should matter is ourselves. Hubris is never attractive and that’s not what I’m advocating. Rather, to be aware of the small and subtle things we do everyday that diminishes our needs in our own eyes.

Take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in particular the top three. How many of us inadvertently sabotage our chance at meeting the top three? For example:

Maslow's heirachy of needs

Belong and love needs: Do you always put your needs last? Do they matter less to you than other people’s needs? Do you matter less to you than other people? You should be on par, for we were created all equal.

Esteem needs: When someone pays you a compliment for something you did, do you belittle your achievement by making a flip comment or by saying “it was nothing”?

Self actualisation: Do you seek fulfillment and growth or do you belive this is all there is and you have to settle?

I’ve done all of these at various times, but no more. I’ve gone from if you mind, I don’t matter to if you mind, I still matter. Humility is important, but too much of it and it can diminish.

And the last word on mind and matter goes to Mark Twain:

Mr Twain I couldn’t have said it better myself! So forty is not the new thirty and fifty is not the new forty. It just doesn’t matter. What matters more is the way we see ourselves.

What matters most to you?

Today I give myself permission to matter.

Today I Give Myself Permission to Listen #atozchallenge

We spend our lives believing we have to talk to impress people. We spend more of our lives thinking about what to say next even if what comes out of our mouths is an emotional reaction to what we just heard.

By doing so we are missing out on the best that life has to offer. For at middle age, I have learned to appreciate the cues that the world sends me. Cues come to us in a whole lot of ways and we use a variety of senses to pick up on them. Listening and seeing are obviously two of the most important. The third tool that is generally needed is intuition. However, if we are always talking, trying to get our own point of view across we are less likely to pick up on these cues and more likely to miss opportunities.

The same can be said if we are constantly looking inward and fail to consider our relationships and the needs of others.

To listen well and often, takes wisdom as Oliver Wendell Holmes alluded to in this wonderful quote:

To pickup on cues, it is not enough to be knowledgable it is also necessary to be wise. And more often than not, it is necessary to still the rehearsal of our own impending performance in our head.

Listening to others is the first requirement of understanding. There is no better compliment you can pay someone in this day and age than to give them the benefit of your full attention. It’s part of the reason that therapy and counselling thrives, sometimes all that is needed is to feel that one has been heard. Therapists, counsellors and best friends know that validation can only come from within and by active listening and strategic questioning they will lead you to find your own answers and that validation. I think the same philosophy applies in a marriage. The feeling that you are listened to by your spouse is fundamental to relationship longevity.

I will admit to being an expressive. Never shy about coming forward in a business meeting or in public speaking, it has served me relatively well to date. But I can now see bigger value in just sitting back and listening more often than speaking. This insight has led me to see that more often than not, it’s the same people always doing the talking and therefore the opportunity for new ideas and progressive input is unnecessarily limited. A great leader knows how to listen and to empower even the wall flowers in the team to share their ideas. It is no different in social circles. Sadly, it doesn’t happen too often, probably because we tend to equate talking with power or more importantly silence with weakness. Neither is actually the case.

I have also found that listening has another dimension, that of listening to yourself. We all need to strategize about the decisions that need to be made in our own lives. And we need the physical and head space to do this. We need to stop listening to the noise of business (laundry, cooking, cleaning, car maintenance etc) once in a while and focus on the strategic issues that will affect the bigger direction of our lives. Busy will get you through the next day or week, but strategic will determine the road ahead and create the platform for your busyness. We cannot work out life goals, priorities and identities unless we give ourselves permission to listen to our heads, our hearts and work out the questions we need to ask ourselves. At least I can’t. I need to stop my external talking and find the space to process all the inputs and self-dialogue.

So space to listen and process is not a luxury it is a necessity and I have given myself permission to create it.

Listening is not a weakness. We will not be measured by the number of words we speak, but the impact of them. Blogging is a case in point.

Today I give myself permission to listen.

Raising the Curtain

A look at life at the crossroads in preparation of the second act…because life does not come with signage

Tag Archives: Today I give myself persmission to…

Today I Give Myself Permission to Reflect on the #atozchallenge

Today I Give Myself Permission to Be Zealous #atozchallenge

Today I Give Myself Permission to be Xenial #atozchallenge

Today I Give Myself Permission to be Vulnerable #atozchallenge