Category Archives: Lessons Learned

Lessons learned from my walks

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Military Moves

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That got your attention I bet. But this post is not about what it seems. It’s not about war or the Ukraine or politics or anything. It’s actually about me and my retirement. Even though this is a selfish post, maybe it will help others.

When I wrote military moves I was referring to what we call PCS orders or Permanent Change of Station orders (as opposed to Temporary change when we go somewhere for a short while). I think this is more military brainwashing (just kidding) because until you’re out of the military NOTHING is permanent.

Anyway, you get used to moving around a lot. That was actually one of the things that made me not want to stay in the Navy. But 30 years later there I was. I don’t like change and I absolutely never liked being transferred and having to move. But I did and I survived. As with all else in my life, it has been for the good and helped me in more ways than i know.

Yesterday I was waiting at a hospital with a friend and all day I was having pretty bad chest pressure. I’ve been having similar things all month too but since I had a workup a year ago I wasn’t really worried it was my heart. I just couldn’t figure it out.

This morning I realized that Feb is “my month of reflection”- So many significant things have happened to me in the month of Feb – many “bad” (but not in the long run) but also some good. What I did see about being at the hospital yesterday was that I treated my retirement as just another set of PCS orders – and my workplace did too. All this was thanks to Covid. I never had anyone say “goodbye and thanks” in person. A few emails yes but nothing formal. After 47 years that is tough. Of course I understand all of it intellectually but my heart didn’t understand it at all. And to make matters worse, I never allowed myself the chance to be sad or to mourn the loss of my medical career. No matter how happy I am doing what I am doing now, it’s not the purpose I set out to fulfill at the age of 4. That part of my life is over and gone. I miss it. I never really admitted that to myself. I think it hurt too much. When you get orders, you just move on.

No matter how well adjusted you are and how happy you are, it’s ok to miss things and it’s more than ok – in fact, it’s necessary to take the time to feel (that’s a word I’m just getting used to) the loss and feel sad. I think before I started looking at emotions I equated feeling sad with being bad. You were just supposed to move on.

Obviously I’m still learning my body’s communication system. This is the way I’ve recently thought about it. All my life I was getting phone calls but I never answered – the phone was off the hook. Emotions were not something that I allowed into my existence/my world. They were a sign of weakness (the gospel according to mom and dad) so you just don’t have them.

In 2016 my body sent a letter – a personal letter (Shingles). I opened it but then threw it away. So my body then followed up with a telegram (the post Shingles nerve pain). That I had to sign for and accept. Man was that horrible. But all it did at that time was continually generate two questions “why is this happening?” and “how long will I have to suffer?” I never read the small print that gave the instructions.

In 2017 my body was really exasperated with my failure to get the message so it sent me a text message with the most obnoxious ring tone you can imagine. And it wouldn’t shut up. This resulted in 5 weeks in the hospital over a 3 month period. Guess what? I finally got the message. I wasn’t able to read it all because a lot of it was “off the screen” but i started looking at what my body was telling me. I did realize it was THE most stressful time of my entire life and that this was my body’s way of getting me away from it. That was almost 5 years ago and over these past 5 years I have allowed my emotions to have a place at the table bit by bit.

I made my last PCS move in 2020 when I retired but I am just now allowing myself to feel how much I miss all that I was involved in since I was 4 years old. That’s a long time – even longer than the 47 years of my career. Of course I’m going to be sad. And that’s ok. I can continue to move on to my new “duty station” while also grieving for that tremendous loss.

Do any of these thoughts ring a bell for you? Have you gotten repeated messages from your body begging you to please stop looking outside but to turn around and look inside? I imagine you have. I think we all have. What do you need to do to realize it’s ok to have these feelings and thoughts?

Sorry this has been all about me today but I had to get it out. Thanks for reading if you got this far.

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Miracle or Just an Invention?

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Here’s one definition of miracle: extraordinary and astonishing happening that is attributed to the presence and action of an ultimate or divine power.

What constitutes ‘divine power’?

I think we should pay attention to those things that are all around us – those we take for granted on a daily basis. It is my opinion that we have become too glib about what surrounds us. I believe there are many miracles in our lives but we just don’t see them anymore. We’re always looking elsewhere. Most of what makes our day go smoothly was probably once considered a miracle – the inventions – the airplane, electricity, the car, going to outer space, antibiotics, vaccines, etc..

The cynics would say those things are just inventions. I say they are miracles. It gives me pleasure and happiness to look around me and see all the miracles that have made my life as perfect as it is. And it is perfect in so very many ways. Do I give thanks for this? Not enough. Do I take everything for granted? Unfortunately, Yes. My heater wasn’t working when it was so cold here last week. When the guys fixed it, did I realize how fortunate I was that a thing called a “heater” was in existence now? You bet. I thought about it even more for the 4 days I froze my butt off. It made me remember that the house I lived in when I was young had a coal bin in the cellar. Those are probably words many of you don’t even understand. Cellars are now basements and coal bins were the walled off sections in that cellar where they stored the coal for heating. What a pain that was.

Look around you. Stop taking each day and each “gift” in your life for granted.

Start each day anew and see how many “miracles” you can identify. You can do it when you wake up, when you go for a walk, on your way to work or to the store or even lying in your bed. Treat each person you meet each day as a miracle in your life. Soon, the miracles will multiply and you’ll spot even more.

Let’s focus on the good people and things around us. Each of us has a daily miracle. We just need to open our eyes to find it

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Are You Using Visualization Effectively?

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Visualization is not daydreaming. It’s a focused technique where you do mental imagery and see things exactly as you want them to be. You’ve heard the saying “everything happens twice” (my paraphrase). This is an old belief that is now, like so many others, incorporated into many motivational speaker’s repertoire. What it means, though, is that we first create what we want in our minds and then it happens in our lives. It may not be right away but it will happen. I had wanted to do the cross country trek for over 30 years and thought about it in my mind so many times. It took 30 years but it finally got started. I put it that way because you all know that it didn’t get finished…yet. I’m still working on that. When I was a kid I only wanted 3 things – to be a doctor, to have a horse and to meet Mickey Mantle. I ended up with two of the three so that’s pretty good. 


Why did I put the subject line as I did? Because if you're like me, you may not have been using visualization the best way. I have only discovered this recently. Most people, including me, think that you should visualize the outcome you want and if you're specific enough and rehearse it, it will come. But what I have discovered is that it's really helpful if you write down potential adversities that you will encounter and then have specific visualizations of how you will be overcoming or dealing with them. You need to do this for every type of obstacle you can think of. If you go along with the everything happens twice, this make sense. If you just write the obstacles down and in writing figure out a plan then that is good too. You are still creating the solution in your mind, just not in a formal visualization. Try writing it out and then do a visualization -  watching yourself figure out how to get across the stream without getting totally immersed or watching yourself making sure your kids are safe while you're doing a business video without them barging in, when these things occur, it will be like second nature to implement the solution. 

This type of visualization makes so much sense for we all know that when we want something big, there will be things that are considered obstacles in the way. If we anticipate and visualize how to navigate despite the obstacle, they then are no longer obstacles. 

This is exciting to me and will be something I implement for Vol State training. 

Hope you have a great day - you will if you visualize it!