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April 22, 2015

Questioning the Trajectory of your Life? Try Filling Out these 2 Lists.

awesome sign

This morning, I was sitting in my favorite “office away from home” at a local coffee shop called The Zen Den with a group of power-house women.

Nestled in chairs and couches, sipping our beverages of choice and munching on sweet treats in this comfy place, we’d gathered for the inaugural meeting of an every-other-week Social Media Magic group. Each of us is a conscious entrepreneur whose right livelihood work serves the planet as well as ourselves.

It included a developer of a wellness/fitness website, a yoga teacher, an author, speaker and active volunteer, a marketer and promo professional, an interfaith minister and writer, and yours truly. What we also have in common is the desire to share our talents and get well compensated in the process. Not too much to ask for.

Part of a growing trend of cooperation and mutual support between women, rather than competition, we have each other’s backs instead of being back biting. We applaud each other’s successes—we know that a rising tide lifts all boats. We are each other’s cheerleaders; symbolic pompoms waving. Yaysayers, rather than naysayers.

Today, we tossed around ideas about what works and what doesn’t with regard to the relationship building process of engaging in social media activity. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Hootsuite, Buffer…words that 15 years ago would have had us scratching our heads with a cartoon character “huh?” all are now normal parts of the vernacular.

In the course of conversation, my friend Tobie came out with a comment that inspired this article.

She was telling another group member who was questioning the trajectory her life was taking, to “source your happiness from within, take care of yourself and fall in love with yourself, and then you wake up one day and realize ‘Damn, I’m Awesome!'” She claimed that identity too and encouraged each of us to believe that about ourselves.

Tobie walks the talk, running a yoga studio, with her loving hubby who teaches as well. She is an open hearted friend who lights up a room when she enters it. How many of us can actually declare out loud, in public that we are awesome?

There are some days when I do feel over the top amazing, like a fairy Godmother on steroids who bops people on the head with her magic wand and sprinkles glitter on them. (I do actually have both.) On other occasions, I imagine myself to be the moss on the underside of a rock in a stream, being worn down by the water that gushes over it. I much prefer the first, although, admittedly, it might seem like outrageous behavior for people who may look at me and think “Who is this weirdo?”

I contend that we all have bragging rights, since we wouldn’t have gotten to this point in life without having become accomplished people. When you think back about the skills you have mastered, perhaps beyond learning to read, write, tie your shoes, tell time, ride a bike, skate, drive a car, graduate from high school, college, engage in healthy relationships, raise children, grow a garden and have a career, the mind boggles.

We take so much of that for granted. I know I did for many years.

Then I list my own awesome accomplishments:

Overcoming childhood health challenges
Earning a Masters Degree
Being ordained as an interfaith minister
Working for decades as a therapist
Learning seat of the pants journalism
Co-publishing a magazine for 10 years
Writing for elephant journal
Overcoming  my fear of being assertive and speaking my mind
Writing a book and co-authoring a few others
Interviewing His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Completing an Outward Bound Course in New England in the winter of 1981
Hosting a radio show
Raising a child solo after being widowed at 40 and keeping us in the same house we were in for all these years
Recovering from shingles, a heart attack and kidney stones in a year’s time
Rebounding from the deaths of my husband and parents and emerging even more resilient
Teaching around the world
Embracing the choices I have made, since they have brought me to this moment
Putting down the symbolic self flagellating whip
Setting appropriate boundaries in my relationships; rather than being “an emotional contortionist who would bend over backward to please people”
Facing my Perfectionista and sending her on a much needed vacation
Riding the winds of change, wherever they may blow
Committing to love myself as I would a treasured other
Having many friends who are gifts in my life
Setting daily intentions to have extraordinary experiences and connect with amazing people, and each day I do
Being the go-to person for friends and family as a resource queen
Seeing my own inner and outer beauty
Working my recovery program each day Becoming an opti-mystic who views the world through the eyes of possibility

How would your life change if you claimed your magnificence?

Would you feel more confident? Would your horizons expand? 
Would your relationships be more fulfilling?
Would you take better care of yourself and make more self-loving choices?
Would you let go of worn out beliefs that hold you back?
Would you take leaps of faith that might have terrified you in the past? 
Would you face fierce fears? Would you attract more of what you desire and deflect what you don’t want? 
Would you embrace authenticity and reveal the real? 
Would you heal from wounds?
Would you allow in people and experiences that buoy you up rather than bully you down?
Would you see awe and wonder in each moment?
Would you be willing to trade your old perceptions and the smudgy glasses that have the world appear blurred and distorted, for clear lenses?

In this moment and all those that follow, I double-dog dare you to own your awesome.

 

Relephant read: 

I Have My Own Approval.

 

Author: Edie Weinstein

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Lisa Parker/Flickr

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