Retrain Yourself And Your Brain

Your goals, values, behaviors, and boundaries go with you at work, home, and play in every hour and every moment. Unless you can predict the future, you might not see that moment clearly now. It then becomes important to constantly relearn and reprioritize. Say no and say yes, but do them equally and mean both. You go where you place your energy. Take the time to slow down, teach others, and trust. Mentor, delegate, learn, and ask for help. Be five or more minutes early to everything, both personally and professionally. Account for traffic and the commute, and expect the unexpected. Know where your center of peace is. If you have too much of this or that, learn to bring yourself back to center. Realize you put energy into what is most important to you.

Emotionally Rescued

Understand and live by the principle that you can’t undo or get back your time, moments, or energy. Put your health above all. Without your health intact, not much else matters. Volunteer your time. It will help you maintain perspective in many areas of your life. Consider yourself a time management trainee and even get yourself a timer. Retrain yourself and your brain. So, as we are working toward mastery level in our approach to change, acceptance accompanies great awareness of patience and time and kindness to yourself and others. The goal becomes having the changes become part of you and part of your behavior, without the checklists, reminders, alarms, and so forth. For example, after six months now, I am dairy free, and I get up on my own without an alarm and go for a walk. It’s practiced and habitual to the point of morphing into my being. As we refine and define and perhaps redefine acceptance, please remember to allow.

Never Give Up

Acceptance is a refining point, and your limiting beliefs might still be creeping in. As you push past these feelings and move toward your goals or dreams or the outcome you desire, this is a moment where real transformation happens or we accept our unforeseen circumstance as reality. As you read these next two accounts, please know they are two incredible stories of overcoming. Neither Kris Fuller nor Deb Landry were given notice to how their lives would change. Let’s hear from Kris Fuller first. This is a deeply personal tale about losing her husband, Ben, during the pandemic. I accept change, hurdles, and aches along the way with grace. January 2020 started on an incredibly high note. It was my time to shine. My husband, family, and team of supporters were all cheering me on, and I knew it was going to be an incredible year of growth, inspiration, and joy. I was ready to allow success and accept all the wonderful things that were going to flow into my life. On February 26, however, things changed dramatically.

All I've Got to Do

Family’s office, waiting to hear news from an ultrasound about his stomach. Ben thinks it’s gallstones, the doctor thinks it’s an ulcer and I’m just annoyed. Annoyed that my husband hasn’t been eating, has been in pain and has not been in to see the doctor sooner. The doctor comes in and tries to prepare us with This is the worst part of my job. Giving bad news to people. And Ben, you are so young. It’s not good news. My heart turns to concrete as the next words are shared. It’s not the part about Ben having cancer. It’s the part about it being stage 4 and already showing up in the liver. It’s the part where the doctor looks somber. It’s the part where I look across at my husband and see, maybe for the first time, how thin he truly is. There is a pit in my stomach. My entire chest hurts. No, it’s much more than that. Shoulder to shoulder, it tenses into a pain I have never felt before. Tears come and the doctor passes me the tissue box. I creak out, What is his life expectancy now? like a sad robot. What a terrible question. What is wrong with me? Kindly, he replies, We must wait for the oncologist and more information. There is a flurry of what’s next, what’s to come, and how urgent it all is. We leave together, my body is moving through water. I am so heavy with this news and I just want to lie down forever. How quickly my plans to develop, enrich my business, and focus on myself changed! And here I was, faced with my biggest challenge yet. Putting my own words into practice. How was I to accept this news? How could I handle the changes we were about to face, and the uncertainty of it all? The truth is, I could not at first. I was angry, upset, even hurt that the universe could betray me like this. Or was it Ben’s body that did the betraying? I resisted allowing, resisted accepting. I fought to have it not be true, but it was futile, of course. Daily, quickly I had to adjust. And with that, I knew I had to release my anger and put joy into everything we did. Our time was now so precious, how could we waste any of it? I started my day with gratitude, loving things that were precious in my life. Our cat, our home, our yard. It was surprising how quickly the world shifted into action. However, it meant that I was not allowed to accompany Ben to appointments. He received treatments without me, nights alone, and I spent days in the hospital parking lot crying in my car, at a massive loss. Those were difficult times for both of us. More than anything we wanted to be together. I just didn’t want him to be alone, ever. Looking back, I think the universe had some hand in the timing of my own changes. Closing my business created time for me, searching for development opportunities online created new colleagues and projects for me.