Daily Gratitude: How often do we do this? Let other people define who we are? Why do we do this? Because as a tribal organism I think we care too much about other people say or think. As such we ask for opinions all the time and then we abide by those opinions rather than analyzing all of them given our circumstances and then making our own decision. Often times we think we know what we want to do but then we hear someone tell us that what we think isn’t correct. So then we change it. This happened to me. I had a complete first draft of one of the books I have wanted to write for years. I signed up for a course on memoirs and from what I learned in it, I decided what I wrote sucked and I needed to start over. That was kind of heartbreaking and as you can imagine, I have yet to restart it. Ugh. Why did I listen. Another smart friend later said “maybe your book isn’t a memoir?” And in many ways she’s right. It’s about my experiences and wisdom obtained in my career but not specifically about me. So I have no idea what I am writing. It’s funny how listening to others destroyed the confidence I had while drafting it initially. Don’t let this happen to you! Your life is your script.

Daily Gratitude: This is so true. It seems that when we want something so much, there is often some form of fear (or even more than one form) standing right in front of us. It’s embarrassing to think of the number of things I’ve missed in my life because of fear. We couch that fear in many “outfits” or “costumes” such as “I really don’t want to”, “it doesn’t matter that much”, “I’m too old so it’s too late”, “that’s not in my wheelhouse”, “I don’t know how to do that and there’s no time to learn”, etc. These are all coverups for fear. We need to recognize what we’re doing and how we are avoiding pursuing our goal and then figure out the things we are fearing. Once we find the underlying fears, we can develop strategies to overcome them. Some we can overcome on our own but others might need help with it. It takes work but take it from me, it’s worth it.

Daily Gratitude: How many of you read this and thought “how selfish this is”? It’s not selfish at all. In fact it’s essential. We have to start with ourselves and making changes within before we can have any real hope of changing the world. For 70 years I thought I was just stuck being the person I was – and it was not a very good image. There was despair thinking I could or would never change. But then I discovered IFS (Internal Family Systems) and learned that change is possible at any age. Once I applied the principles of IFS, I not only became a changed woman but also a much happier woman. It takes work (just as curing chronic pain takes work by you) but I can tell you that this is the most rewarding work I’ve ever done – either for myself or for others. Once you decide you want to change and find the method that works for you, you’ll go through some grief because you are losing parts of yourself. But once your brain and your parts are realigned, you’ll wonder why you didn’t discover this a long time ago. Everything comes in it’s time and I am so grateful my time finally came.