Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Watchers

Mark Nepo is a genius at putting words on paper that succinctly describe a multitude of feelings. He is easily able to describe things and feelings in ways that I feel, but am unable to describe. In his book The Book of Awakenings I am repeatedly awed by his ability to do this.

In his September 3 passage, he speaks of growing up under our parent's and teacher's watchful eye and then going forward in life and feeling as if they might still be watching. By then we have internalized their watchfulness and made it our own. "As I reached adulthood, the habit continued. I walked around constantly troubled by what others must be thinking of what I was or was not doing. In this, we are burdened with the seeds of self consciousness. From this we trouble our spontaneity and the possibility of joy by watching ourselves too closely, nervously unsure if this or that is a mistake."

I loved this passage and it puts words on a feeling that runs in the background and self monitors our actions and words. There is a trade off in that it makes us monitor our behaviour for success and acceptance where we wish it to be. It is only as we grow tired of behaving that we seek to escape 'the watchers' as he calls them. To feel the spontaneity that has succumbed to the need for propriety. As we age and see the world from a different perspective we realize that no one is really watching. Those we thought were watching have their own life tales unfolding. And we also see that if people are watching to judge, it really does not change us or our place in the world.

We need to laugh out loud, dance and sometimes behave outrageously to really feel our freedom from our self-watch. We need to try new things without concern for who is deciding whether we should or should not be doing it. We need to have new experiences without being fearful of making mistakes.

"Now the audience of watchers is gone and I can feel life happen in its quiet, vibrant way without anything interfering. Now, sometimes at night, when the dog is asleep and the owl is beginning to stare into what no one ever sees, I stand on the deck and feel the honey of night fall off the stars, feel it coat the earth, the trees, the minds of children half asleep, feel the stillness evaporate all notions of fame into the unwatched space that waits for light."

His way with words takes my breath away.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Our Greatest Achievements Are Ahead...


Marti Barletta is head of a marketing company Trend Sight Group that consults with companies who seek to market to women. She has determined that women, especially those in their 50's and 60's wield the most purchasing power due to their role in both the workplace and family and their comparatively high disposable income.

For all the amazing strengths that this company brings I still find a singular quote that Marti makes as one of the most revealing and motivating statements about women at this point in our lives. She says that we "experience the joy of being, relish liberation from expectation,rock our world, brim with confidence and live life in drive, who feel our greatest achievements are ahead of us." Amazing in this simple sentence and between each set of commas is a unique profound thought, each segment of the sentence worth thinking on.

We "experience the joy of being". For all its advantages, being young just never let you feel the joy of just being. Or maybe it did, but we were too filled with angst and expectation to really see it for what it was. A deeply thought filled, peaceful, joyful state where there are no expectations or performance requirements and we can see and appreciate a moment for just what it is. We need to expand those moments so they fill a greater proportion of our day.

We "relish liberation from expectation." A whole lifetime of doing what was expected of us from our early years to high school, to marriage and children and jobs. A now we just want to define what it is that makes us tick and shed the shackles of expectation. A virtual explosion of joy each time we are able to make a small change in the process of liberating ourselves from the demands and expectations of life as it should be.

We "rock our world, live with confidence and live life in drive." Get out of the passenger seat and drive. Where was it you wanted to go? What was it you planned to do in your private dreaming moments? We get to find those dreams and create them now. Not easy. Scary...a little. But exhilarating to go towards them. I love that 'rock our world' phase. How long has it been since something has truly rocked your world? Brings us back to the quest for safety and conformity that eventually becomes the self created box in which we live our lives.

In his book Awakenings, Mark Nepo shares an enlightening passage that applies to how we live. This entry is for January 9 in his book and it is called "Life In the Tank". I will quote the passage in order to do it justice. "It was a curious thing. Robert had filled the bathtub and put the fish in the tub, so he could clean their tank. After he'd scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make-believe deep, he went to retrieve them.

He was astonished to find that, though they had the entire tub to swim in, they were huddled in a small area the size of their tank. There was nothing to contain them, nothing to hold them back. Why wouldn't they dart about freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim?".

You can, no doubt see the analogy to how we live our lives. We work hard to establish this safe place in the world and then at this point we need to work really hard to shed our quest for safety and move into DRIVE. "Rock Our World!" And the truly amazing part of the phrase is "who feel our greatest achievements are ahead of us." That is simply the most exciting part of the quote. Because the typical view of this stage in our lives is that our best years are behind us. But that does not need to be true. She shatters the typical view that our years ahead should be a gradual slide into old age. Is it possible (and a bit exciting) that our greatest achievements are yet to come? It changes the playing field to think like that and it changes how you look at your personal future. And it makes you accountable to create what could be. Drive!



If you want to read more of the life changing stuff by Mark Nepo:
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

For those of you who would like to read more by Marti Barletta PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big SpendersMarketing to Women: How to Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market

Friday, April 15, 2011

Yoga Rocks!

I have been attending Yoga classes for a month or so now and I think I now have a modicum of experience which allows me to share my first impressions. Having spent my life participating in sports with a harder, faster, stronger ethos, yoga always seemed to me to be a sidebar in my life. Something I would eventually get to, but never did.

I have now attended a series of yoga classes with different instructors, on the advice given to me by a woman at my club. She had suggested not making my judgement on yoga until I had tried a series of classes with different instructors.

One class I went to seemed focused on muscle strength and the ability to hold tentative poses for a long time. I figured that since I lift weights this would be easy. But it wasn't. And when we did the exercise designed to move you closer to being able to do the splits, I realized just how inflexible I have become. And I thought, I want to do that. I want to be able to do the splits again.

Another class focused on multiple short poses seemingly designed for opening up parts of the body that are seldom stretched in real life. It was amazing. We did a pose with the blocks which opened up my spine and chest area and it felt so good, I could have held it forever.(See below)The instructor was young and assumed that nobody knew the poses and so it was great for a beginner like me.

And the third instructor took us through a series of contortions that I found difficult to coordinate. I followed it exactly through the whole class and thought that this went against all the ideas of what yoga should be. Complex, difficult, and always thinking. And I realized that it is a combination of my learning curve and stretching parts of me that do not get stretched that was causing me to lose my Zen. But after the class, as I went through my day, I felt amazing. My body felt limber, and seemed to be there at my command.

Despite all my different abilities in fitness, I have never achieved that mind body congruence that was hinted at in my first month of yoga. I now understand what all the excitement is about. I like where the first month and eight classes have taken me. From skeptic to zealot, I think I will continue with this and see where it takes me.

Here is a great pose for stretching a part of your back that until now was only attainable by a visit to the chiropractor. You will be surprised at how effective it is. And you can replace the blocks with anything soft like towel stacks.

Image compliments of Elsie's Yoga

Monday, April 11, 2011

Do You Like Me?


I find it interesting that in all my interactions with people, I seek to leave them with a positive impression of their time with me. It is not something I actively work on, but something intuitive that compels me to create positive feedback from each person I come into contact with. It tends to make my life more pleasant in general because most people appreciate the effort and reciprocate. But it is a win some, lose some kind of game. Because not everybody shows the same deference to this civil mode of interaction. I am fascinated and slightly envious of people who do not have this compulsion though. John Tierney writes in the New York Times of a quote from Jeffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico. “We evolved as social primates who hardly ever encountered strangers in prehistory,” Dr. Miller says. “So we instinctively treat all strangers as if they’re potential mates or friends or enemies. But your happiness and survival today don’t depend on your relationships with strangers. It doesn’t matter whether you get a nanosecond of deference from a shopkeeper or a stranger in an airport.” It is true that it doesn't matter but somehow most of us intuitively act as if it does matter. I love the reference to the evolutionary imperative that lies beneath the behavior and the need for positive response from those we do not know. He calls this desire to impress strangers "a quirky evolutionary byproduct of a smaller social world."

It somehow makes this slightly compulsive behavior less toxic and more amusing than anything else. And it reduces the significance of the less than pleasant interactions.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Conformity


"To cling to the thoughts and ways of performing that you’ve always known is to resign yourself to being average. And mediocre. A spectator versus in the game." Robin Sharma

Here is the thing about this. We are socialized to become spectators because spectators do not disturb the status quo. In her book Sociology Understanding a Diverse Society Margaret L. Andersen states that "socialization is a form of social control. Because socialized people conform to cultural expectations, socialization gives society a certain degree of predictability, establishing patterns that be come the basis for social order." The message as we grow is that it is definitely better to roughly if not totally conform to societal norms. So breaking free from a lifetime of conformity requires some serious traction.

How much easier it becomes to conform as we age too. We learn to get very good at fitting in to new situations because that guarantees our immediate and long term survival in those situations. Anytime we enter a new situation our need to conform rises. Two year olds exhibit a distinct unwillingness to conform. Teenagers experience the opposite, where they have a dangerously high need to conform. When we start a new job we sit back and watch while we learn the rules and the hierarchy of the new environment. And we learn those rules well.

After a whole lifetime of conforming is it any surprise that men and women decide suddenly at fifty years old, give or take a few years, that we had so much to accomplish outside of the norm that society asked us to abide by. Sue Shellenbarger calls it "a psychological and spiritual upheaval [that] have been mistaken for menopause symptoms and reduced to a biological phenomenon". But is it possible that it is neither hormonal nor menopausal, but instead just a sudden recognition of our path as unique from the path that society would wish us to ponder. And such a committment to it that we will risk all to take that untravelled path and fulfill our raison d'etre in this life. To experience and live all the things that we were going to do once.

There is a certain clarity in the simple realization of this thought. Like the clouds cleared and you just get it. It removes the danger flags and warnings that flash through you brain and you see it for what it is. A twinkling goal ahead on a clear night. You realize that all along nothing terrible would have actually happened. You would not have been left out in the cold. And if you were, you would have been okay with that.

Get back into the game.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Ground Rush


An amusing analogy compliments of the Globe & Mail and John Morton of the BBC.

"Parachutists call it ground rush. Apparently while you are falling through the sky and before you open your parachute, the perception is that you are dropping to the ground at a perfectly manageable speed. Yes, it's exhilarating, but there's plenty of time to take in the wonder of it all. But that's an illusion caused by a lack of visual cues. It's only when you drop below a certain height and suddenly become aware that the ground is rushing up to meet you that you realize how fast you have been falling all along. Maybe there is an analogy here for the way we experience time over the course of a human life."

Enough said.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Create Your Life


I like that idea. We create our day and it accumulates to be our life. Rather than spending the day, and therefore our life, reacting to the things that come our way. That is not to say that we cannot absorb into our creation, the things that come our way with potential to enhance our day. The idea is to avoid spending a day being pushed and pulled by other's agendas and lose sight of your own agenda.

I spent the day chasing after little dysfunctional details today. As the day comes to an end, I wonder about this wasted block of time and I know that there were a million other ways I could have spent the day. Sometimes it is necessary, as taking care of those annoying little details gets them out of the way. I prefer to do that all in one day. Plus they pay me to take care of those details!

You wake up in the morning to a blank slate. A 24 hour hour period to fill as you wish. If you don't create it, it will pass by anyway. Wonderful hours left unused and wasted. I have used up about 19,345 days of my life. That is an alarming number. :)

That said, if I live to be 90,I still have 13,500 days to fill with anything I want. That sounds exciting. It behooves me therefore, to waste a single day reacting to events.

Creating a day involves some meditative thought before you start. I wrote a previous blog about choosing to be happy. This involved some morning rituals that reset your happy meter to high to start off your day. The result is that when you do, your day tends towards happy for the next 24 hours. I was sceptical but it turns out to be true for me. So that is the start of creating your day.

Choose the main things that you would like to do that day that will make a day of your own choosing. Slot these in. As simple as a walk at midday or the creation of a fabulous dinner with friends. Remember that concept where if you fill a jar with small stones then there no longer exists room for the big rocks. If you put the big rocks in first, there still exists room for the small stones in between the rocks. The big rocks are the things that make your heart sing. Make sure you have room in your day for these.

13,500 days. Creating not Reacting. Requires a little forethought but anything is possible then. Cool thoughts to end the week.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Decide To Be Happy


Some days I think we just have to decide to be happy. I somehow view happy and less happy days as something that just happens to me, rather than something I control. I blame it on whatever is happening that day like a lousy meeting or an anticipated confrontation on an issue. Or on the fact that I did not eat right or exercise that day or the one prior. Or that I had one too many cocktails the day prior. Or that it is part of my physiological cycles. I see myself as dealing with it when it happens and not controlling it's existence.

But over the last few weeks I have tried a few well publicized but rather trite techniques for being happy. And they resulted, more often than not, in a complete change in the quality of my day, no matter what was happening to me or around me in my environment. I experienced what I call intentional happiness. What a cool concept. It implies the reverse is also true. That I create my less happy days as well. I am responsible for the quality of my days. I like that. On one hand that is positive actionable knowledge, and on the other hand it makes me immensely accountable for each days moods.

Even as I refer to the term 'moods' I realize that i have typically disowned my moods, whether they were positive or negative. This new knowledge implies that those moods do not just happen but that I have control over them....

So here is a list of the things that I have practised to increase my daily dose of happy:

1. When you wake up in the morning remind yourself that you are trying this new tactic for creating a happy day. Do this before you have started the tape in your brain that lists all the less desirable things you have to do that day. The one that moans about getting up in the first place, that curses the job that forces you to get up. You know that tape. Yours may say different things but we all have one.

2. Replace the terrible tape with a list of things that are right with your world. The kids are all okay. You have a job or if you don't then you can be grateful for a day to yourself. You are warm and there is food in the kitchen and maybe a really good cup of coffee. We are not looking for the big things here. A long list of small things is more powerful than a short list of good things. Sometimes before I open my eyes I think of all the good things in my life and then I get up and start my day.

3. While you think through this list and work to make it longer, smile. Tough one some days. But it is really hard to feel physically bad when you smile. Trust me and try it. I read somewhere that Steve Martin starts his day by laughing in the mirror for one full minute. Works for him!

4. Feel peaceful and grounded and let that feeling take over your physical self. Sometimes, in order to feel grounded, it helps to feel the physical feeling of having roots which connect into the ground, like a tree does. It is easier to do after you have done the first three steps. Just trust me and try it. Someone else told me about it and for a while it meant nothing and then it just took hold. And I got it.

5. Now go out and take on your day. Have your coffee and stay with the good thoughts and ping the bad ones. Gaze peacefully at those who may harsh your mellow (love that term) and move on with your day without engaging.

I like that I can decide to be happy and then I am. A little magic in my day.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Semi-Retirement


I like that term. It involves working at something you might enjoy but not working all the time. Working on your own schedule. Choosing the number of hours and the tasks you do. Most people to whom I have spoken on this will say that the day they retired was glorious and full of the promise of doing all the things they never had time to do when they were fully employed.

And then they started doing those things and realized that they did not want to do them after all. So they tried some other things. Each person wading through the choices and finding the ones that make them hum. I have a good friend who will retire in a couple of months and she is going to get in her car and drive off on the road trip that she has planned. How exciting to go with a general agenda but be open and flexible enough to change it as new experiences come in on the horizon.

That is what retirement should be. Having a plan but being open to new ideas and shedding the old ones that turn out not to be what you had thought they could be.

I am sure that exercising more tops any list of retirement priorities since as we age our bodies require more maintenance than they used to. But most people who actually have retired say that even though they are not working they still find it difficult to fit this in. Other things that make the list are spending time in the garden, learning to cook like a chef and travelling.

My parents said they were planning to travel and did but found that as time went on they just liked to be home in the garden and hanging with family.

So here is how I see it. Make plans. Create your wish list. Start trying each item on the list and if it fits wear it. If it doesn't leave it behind. Stay flexible and be willing to add and subtract from your list as you go.

This applies to employment too. Try out different jobs that might be fun. A barista, an usher at a major sports building, the main desk at a busy fitness centre, the zoo. Volunteer or get paid a little. The goal is to have fun and still have time to do all those things you didn't have time for when you were working. It keeps you engaged socially and let's you learn new things that engage and challenge your mind and build new webs of neurons in your brain. And that will keep you interested and interesting as you age!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Breaking the Paradigms that Define Us





I took some holidays without plans mostly because I had to take them or lose them. So I planned to work on the business and maybe get a feel for how it would feel without a 'real' job. My second son who still lives at home is away in Guatemala for the week so the whole image of what it is going to be like was very real.

Day 1 was delicious. I slept in and woke up and had my coffee and read anything and everything for about two hours. Then I did a few things for the business. Then I went to the gym and did a spin class which made me feel amazing. I went home and on the way, stopped leisurely in to pick up a few groceries at the Italian deli, to make this meal I had in my mind to make. I took my dog for a walk and just appreciated the cold and snow rather than cursing it. While I put the dinner together I had a glass of the most amazing red wine, a Shiraz, called A Bird in Hand. Nothing rushed. Just simply in the moment each moment of the day.

And I realized that staying in the moment instead of staying focused on the never ending list in your head is about doing less and running less. Trying to get less into your day rather than more. Is it always realistic that we could make that happen. Not sure.

So then Day 2 arrived and started similar to Day 1 but throughout the day I was haunted by this aimless feeling of wasting time rather than treasuring each moment. I have heard others speak of it too. Wondered why it is that we feel that it is wasting time when we don't go out to do a job that has dubious relevance in the whole scheme of things and yet when we do the things that feel good and spend time with those who light us on fire, we feel an aimlessness and a low grade anxiety for not having accomplished much in our day.

I guess 35 years of going to a job that society deems as credible, sits in my mind as a relevant way to spend my time. Busy-ness is valued. Busy-ness means you are important. The secret paradigm under which I and a lot of other people were schooled. I liked this video below. Simple but it is a great illustration of how a paradigm is formed.

Is it possible to remove this programming from my brain and set up a new paradigm that actually values valuable time spent enjoying each moment rather than just filling each moment. Not sure but I intend to explore that option over the next two weeks. Since I am going back to the job, it will not truly represent the goal but it is as close as I can get right now. Emhasis on the 'right now'.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Moonlight on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa


In the name of trying new things, I have a confession to make. I have not been trying new things in my personal realm. For the business every step I make is a new thing...some of them work and some of them do not. In my work life, the one that pays the bills, as opposed to the one that sucks up my money like a black hole, I am currently on a huge learning curve that is surprisingly most enjoyable. I am at my best when I am on my learning curve. That is something I know to be true about me.

But it would seem that I can only manage so much learning curve at one time. So my realm of personal new experiences, although innately connected to my other growth experiences, is quite sadly lacking.

That is part of the reason why, last weekend, we jumped in the car and drove to Ottawa Ontario Canada to visit some friends and....here it comes....we skated on the canal. For those of you who do not know Ottawa, the Rideau Canal winds through the city for 5 miles as the world's longest ice skating rink, and when it freezes in the winter, they clear the snow and maintain the ice surface for skating. The midnight version of this experience is not to be missed. The whole distance is well lit, safe at night and we had the natural light of the moon adding atmosphere to an already magical experience. My two almost adult boys and their girlfriends with us totally.

We went at midnight on a record cold moonlit night and there were still dozens of skaters that we passed through the night. It was one of those experiences that has been on my list for some time and there I was skimming along the ice surface completely oblivious to the freezing temperature.

It does not get any better than that.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

I Suddenly Get the Social Networking Thing for Business













I had an epiphany on the whole social networking possibilities for business. I did not see the whole picture before. It was not that I was not working at it. I read books and articles online to try to integrate it. I played with my Face book, my blogs and Twitter and kept trying new things but it did not completely make sense to me. I just was not getting how it could all work to promote your business. And then I just got it. For some reason the knowledge clicked and now I can see how it can all work. It has amazing possibilities and now I see why everyone is talking about it. Not that it could be, by any means, considered a static entity or one that you can ever truly know. But I get the why and how in it's present form and it makes sense.

I also see why companies who leverage it hire people to monitor it. It can be intensely laborious to remain current all through the various channels that make up social networks. Blogging,comment monitoring, posting comments on other blogs, Face book presence and interactivity and Twitter presence alone can consume your time. Not that it isn't fun! It is lots of fun. But it can eat up the hours that you were planning to do other things. But really...what could be more important than free and almost free advertising for you business.

So some thoughts for anyone out there muddling through the possibilities but not seeing them. I recommend that you just keep on keeping on. Try things and if they work keep them and if they don't work, do something else. Keep doing things and more things. When I felt like I got it, it was like a cloud cover clearing and I could see forever. Nothing amazing happened to cause it. No single catalytic event. Just sudden clarity.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Painting the Canvas that is Your Life


I wanted to share a quote that was wonderfully revealing to me.

Alex Crockett from Broken Postcard sums it up like this: "I used to paint a lot. When I painted I would often have to stand at a distance from the painting in order to not add too much detail to one single area at the exclusion of the whole. It seems that faced with immediacy of life we all too readily get involved in details at the exclusion of what may be a better perspective."

Now, although I often do not know of what Alex speaks on any given day, this particular quote changed how I think. How interesting it is to realize how we shrink our world. We get involved in the day to day of our lives and "add the detail" to our days. That potentially becomes the whole picture and fearfully we can frame it as we see it and it becomes our world view. And we operate there for the rest of our days. In actuality it is a very small microcosm of the entire reality in which we exist. "The whole painting."

If we can for a moment, back up and see how our microcosm fits into the world view, we would be startled by how insignificant the petty details can become. When you view the whole painting, the small area where you were working looks...well...small. What seemed so large becomes so small when you change it's context. It can shrink your problems to a manageable almost laughable size. They become mundane. Humbling. On any given day, I cannot rise above and on other days I can see beyond my world to a strange and exciting distance. Splash color on the whole painting not add endless detail to a small area. Way more fun.

I think the desire to try new things is an effort to expand the piece of the painting that you work on. It makes you want to add colour to a bigger part of the picture. What you see when you back up can make you want to back up even more. Seeing your world as a microcosm of a world that is a microcosm of an even bigger world. How fascinating.

Picture is from http://www.transformyourimages.co.uk/art-gallery-16/paint-burst-yellow-canvas-8109.htm

Monday, January 10, 2011

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS



This poem is from a website called Vibrant Nation. For women 50+. Check it out.

by Portia Nelson

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

I Have an Inner Princess!

I grew up in a time when retail was functional but not meant to entertain. I should say my inner princess was growing up then. Everything you needed was there but there was no glitter and lights. Or not that I remember. It just was what it was. We did not know enough to realize that we might be missing something. So my inner princess sat quietly inside.

There were no pink frilly things, no sparkly things in my memory. I did not know they were even out there if they were. So what happens when this inner princess, who has been repressed through years of working in the competitive world of business, while I made my way to Director with a major blue chip company, suddenly starts to communicate with the competent shell in which she has been hidden for so many years.

I realize that my inner princess is there when I pass by any store with sparkly or pink things and I am unable to comprehend my strange fascination with all things in this realm. Until recently I think the only pink thing I owned was a pink Iron Man T-shirt buried deep in my cupboard. (My dog wears it on Breast Cancer runs now!) The rest were varying shades of blue or black with an odd splash of red.

So how to explain the sudden infiltration of all things pink when I am about to turn 53. Strange sparkly sweaters that I have yet to wear and can no longer remember why I had purchased them. A lifetime of pent up desire or the emergence of my inner princess?

For Christmas we decided that we would not purchase gifts but would give things away to those that had no gifts. After Christmas I listened to some friends who were over talking about some pretty cool gadget gifts one of which was an IPAD and my inner princess cried. (Not really but she stamped her feet a lot!)

And then the day I had to clean the caulking in the shower might have been the day she died. I think she was buried in the caulking I removed. Certainly not a job that a princess would do. Note to myself: Hire someone to do that one next time!

Could this strange awareness of the possible existence of an inner princess actually be aligned with going back to a time when you knew clearly what your hopes and goals looked like. A time when you planned to do something and then you did it and then you made another plan. And you did that. And then life started rolling along seemingly by itself. And so you handled whatever life threw your way. You handled other people's priorities without a second thought too. Your inner princess is the child in you tapping you on the shoulder and saying "Remember?".

My inner princess has surfaced to remind me of a time when my life was my own and my goals and plans were endless and possible. This is the second act and could it be that my dreams are just as endless and possible.
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