There’s an older man in a wheelchair who makes balloon animals for all of the kids near the Columbia Heights metro stop. No matter the weather, he’s out there. I walked past him the other day as a little girl ran to him smiling and squealing with delight. You’d think he was her long lost best friend. And he returned that smile right back to her. The two hugged and he immediately began twisting a balloon into a puppy for her.
That unparalleled joy from both of them showed me the power of connection, the power of giving and receiving. It can come from everyone to anyone everywhere at any time. It knows no limits nor bounds. A smile builds a bridge across every divide and level of diversity. It brings us all together.
“Life is about change. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Most of the time, it’s both.” ~ Lana Lang
You may find that you’re ready for a change. Change is liberating and difficult. It’s exhilarating and frightening. There is rarely a good time for it. We are rarely truly ready for it. While careful planning can help to create a transition, sometimes you have to do something radical. You have to just leap with the confidence that you’ll be able to handle whatever happens. And you will. You will.
When something doesn’t go your way, do you spend any time wondering “why on Earth did I have to go through THAT?” Consider this explanation:
Let’s say you’re in a relationship with someone who turns out to not be the person he represented himself to be when you first met him. It’s highly likely you’ll wonder what his purpose was in your life because now you’re really confused and hurt by the end of it all. Why didn’t the Universe just keep that guy away from you to begin with?
Take a step back because maybe it’s not all about you. Consider this: the Universe wants all of us to rise up and become our best selves, that jerk of a guy included. So you were a gift to him from the Universe. A valuable, precious, amazing gift. And, yes, you could have helped him a lot. You would have been the best thing for him. But he didn’t want the gift of you. Maybe he didn’t know how to appreciate the gift. Maybe he didn’t feel worthy of it. Maybe he didn’t think enough of himself to feel that he deserved it. Or maybe, and this is the saddest reason in my opinion, he actually doesn’t want to be happy. He’s comfortable being miserable.
Your gifts and your light are too valuable to be wasted. He didn’t appreciate the gift of you so he doesn’t get to keep it. The Universe puts an end to it all, and that’s how it has to be for your sake. This whole thing wasn’t about you at all. It was about him. The Universe would have loved nothing better than for him to evolve, but he chose not to so away you go, one way or another.
This duality of what’s in it for you and what’s in it for the system as a whole is always in play. It applies to every interaction we have in every setting. Something for you and something for someone else that together leads to something for the system of which you’re both a part. Apply it to jobs, friendships, romantic relationships, creative projects. The same principles apply.
It really isn’t all about you. It’s about all of us, together.
“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” ~Rumi
No matter what happens to us, the good and the bad, I try to remember that the universe, the prana, is on my side. It wants all of us to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. When unfortunate things happen to me I try to (eventually) realize that this is actually something beneficial to me in the long-run. Unfortunate events steer me away from something, someone, or someplace, because there’s a better option out there that I need to find or there’s a change I need to make. And since I’m not one to settle for less than what I want, an unfortunate event forces me to set out on a journey, external or internal, even if I don’t know exactly where I’m going or how I’ll get there.
This attitude also helps me to trust in a greater and grander view than I can see from my perspective. It means I trust that even though I don’t fully understand why something’s happening to me, I have faith that somewhere down the line it will make sense to me. I’ll be able to look back and see why things that seemed so unfortunate in the moment are blessings in hindsight.
This perspective isn’t always easy to maintain, especially in the thick of the moment. But I’ll tell you this – it’s never failed me. Never. Every unfortunate thing that’s ever happened to me has always made my life better in the grand scheme of things. It just takes time. I trust that this will always be the case. It has to be. After all, would you mess with the universe?
“I would rather be a hot mess of bold action, a make-it-happen-learn-on-the-fly kind of person, than a perfectly organized coward.” ~ Brendon Burchard
This quote resonates with me in such a powerful way. We might think we have all our ducks in a row, that we’ve accounted for every possibility, and yet we find that life has a funny way of throwing us the curve ball we never saw coming. Contingency plans won’t save us. Our abilities to adapt, evolve, grow, and learn are our saving graces. They are the things that will help us not only survive, but thrive, in a world that will always change. I don’t rely on my organizational skills to get by; instead, I believe that I can and will handle whatever life throws my way. Courage to face our challenges head-on is everything.
I’m insanely excited that I’ll be traveling to Sarajevo the week of Thanksgiving to visit Amy, one of my very nearest and dearest friends who is doing a fellowship there. We’re planning to take a few side trips as well and possibilities include Istanbul, Budapest, and Prague.
I haven’t been out of the country since my trip to India in 2012. Work, creative projects, several moves, a creative sabbatical in California, and life in general made an international trip tough to swing. But now that I’m back on track, I’m re-indulging my sense of adventure and wanderlust by flying off to distant lands I’ve never seen before.
Through the wonders of social media, I’ll bring all of you along with me as I meet new people, see new places, and revel in the beauty of a city fighting and finding its way back to its roots through art, music, and cuisine. I’m prepared to fall in love with this city and all it has to offer.
Have you been to Sarajevo? If so, I’d love suggestions of activities and sites I must see.
I love Ryan Adams, and all the more so for quotes like this: “There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never ever.”
The negative people I meet—and sadly there are so many of them out there—often think I’m overly enthusiastic, that I’m just too excited about life. And to that I say, “Someday, I hope you realize what you’re missing.”
I do love the crap out of everything—my friends, Phineas, my city, my writing, my creative projects, music, art, books, animals, nature, my home, travel. You name it and I can find something I love about it. Negative people will knock us down; that’s their choice and we can’t control it.Whether we stay down or eventually rise up is our choice and we do control that. Their behavior has nothing to do with us and everything to do with them. Their negativity is a direct reflection about how they feel about themselves, not how they feel about us.
So here’s my advice: take every wall that a negative person throws in front of you and carve a window into it. Crawl through that window and leave those negative people behind.You are not responsible for them. They don’t have anything to offer you and they don’t want the gifts you have to give. That’s their loss, not yours. You deserve to be surrounded by love; don’t settle for anything less.
As part of my audio storytelling class, I need to capture a wide variety of stories. Nothing too complicated – just 3-5 minutes about an interesting aspect of your life. A place you’ve visited, a dream you have, or an experience that altered how you see yourself and your place in the world. Got one? Let me know. I’d love to talk to you, and record it!
Last night I took the first in a series of three audio storytelling classes. I’ve been kicking around the idea of a podcast and this is my chance to learn some of the basics before diving in. The first class was about the art of the audio interview and this is what I learned:
When putting together audio, think about what you have and you need from your interviewee. For example, they may be able to do a perfectly fine introduction of who they are without you having to introduce them to your listeners.
As a follow-on to point one, don’t ask an interviewee his or her name. Instead, ask him or her to introduce themselves. You’ll learn a lot more from that kind of answer and it’s more interesting to your listeners.
Do a pre-interview to identify one or two burning questions that will get the main interview started.
With audio interviews, you want to start out with a broad set of details and then zero in on one of those specific details to go deep into a story. You actually want to go down the rabbit hole – that’s where all of the good stories are and take full advantage of surprise twists and turns.
Do whatever you need to do to make your interviewees comfortable so that they feel they can be open and honest with you. To that end, let them know you’re going to ask a lot of questions and they have every right to tell you that they don’t want to answer anything you ask. It’s your job to ask questions; it’s their job to decide what to reveal.
Silence is golden. Don’t try to fill dead time. Let it lie and you’ll see that they will fill it.
Don’t verbally agree with an interviewee as it mucks up the audio recording. Instead, shake your head, smile, etc. to encourage him or her.
Some technical points: PCM Recorder is a fantastic app to use for audio recording and it’s free; our smartphones have great audio recording capabilities so use them; the mic of a mobile phone is at the bottom so when you hold it up to an interviewee make sure the bottom of the phone faces him or her; have the mic about a fist away from the interviewee’s mouth to get the best sound quality; always make sure to check your audio quality before conducting an interview.
I can’t wait to continue to share what I learn in the next two classes! Got questions? Send ’em on over and I’ll do my best to get the answers for you.
Yesterday I had my regular call of inspiration and camaraderie with my friend, Sara, one of the wisest people I know. When we hung up the phone, I caught a glimpse of this sunset through a grimy alley in my neighborhood. The light was so rich and intense that it stopped me in my tracks. I ran down the alley and snapped a few photos of the light. I couldn’t get enough of it.
It’s moments like these that remind me that the world we live in is so vast, so incredible. It’s full of magic around every corner if only we will allow ourselves the time and space to see it. It’s not always easy to walk around with your heart on your sleeve, which is where mine has taken up permanent residence. I get knocked around a fair bit. The upside to that is I experience so much more than people who keep their hearts neatly tucked away. The don’t get hurt as much though they don’t love as much either.
Call me crazy, but I’m just fine with the tough times if being open and vulnerable allows me to appreciate sunsets like this, to have friends like Sara, and to experience life in all of its wild and wondrous forms.
