One Less Fear

If there is one thing in life that is certain, it's change.  Every day, whether it goes unnoticed or hits you smack in the face, something in your life is changing.  Your job, family, friendships, even you as a person are subject to change.  It's an absolute certainty, so why is it that one of the few things in life that we know is going to happen still scares us?  I'd like to think that it's not so much a fear of change, but more of a fear of the unknown.  Yes, there are some changes that we make ourselves, the ones  that we seek out, the things that we put into motion, but there are so many that we don't even see coming. The ones that blindside us, that shake up our comfortable lives and at times threaten to push us right off the edge of sanity.  I think that we like our habits and our daily routines and our comfortable, dare I say at times stagnant lives so when something comes along and makes things different in any way, we don't know how to handle it.  Unfortunately, we are so resistant to change that even when something happens that turns us in a completely different direction, we sometimes don't see that we're going down a better road.  Only after the dust has settled from either the initial upheaval or the fight that we've put up to stop it from happening, do we really see that it was a good thing.  I'm not going to sit here and say that all change is good, it's not, but I do believe that all change has a good reason.  It has it's place in our lives, in and of itself might not be good but it could put you on the path to something great.  Heartache can teach you a lesson and bring you to a place where the right love is waiting for you.  Illness can show you the blessing of life and bring you to an understanding of what truly matters in this world.  The loss of anything of importance can teach you to be grateful for what you have and show you the strength that you never you knew had.

Change is scary but without it we would remain the same, never growing, never improving and never becoming the people that we are capable of being.

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." ~ Alan W. Watts

Cut the Ties that Bind and Simply Unsubscribe

Welcome back from the weekend! The last time I was here, I talked about how life is simple but we make it complicated.  In so many ways we create our own stress. Every day things are made to be such a huge task that eventually we either hit the delay button aka procrastinate, or we don't do it at all.  In the last week I've started focusing on the things in my day that have become a time consuming and/or stressful task.  One of the first things I found was that my personal email was a serious problem.  Looking at it you would think that I had given my email to every retailer out there, it's possible, I love a good deal.  Also, with my Facebook and Pinterest accounts dumping into it, the number of emails in my box had stopped being manageable and had started being ignored. I was aware of the situation but I just didnt have the time to deal with it. I tried the daily approach, that didn't work. I tried doing it on the weekend but by then I had amassed so much mail that I either didnt want to, it's the weekend hello, or I simply didn't have the time to go through it, there was important stuff in there too. Which brings me to last week when I had targeted the problem and began my strategy of attack.  One by one I deleted the various " here's what's new" and "end of season sale" emails from my favorite stores. I watched as my numbers slowly decreased and I could feel the weight lifting off of my shoulders but the true freedom came when as I reached each stores final email, I opened it, scrolled to the bottom and clicked UNSUBSCRIBE. Ah at last the emails were gone and now they were never coming back.

It's been days since I completed Project Email Clean Sweep, and my mailbox is clean, organized and most importantly no longer stressful.  I've also noticed that because I'm no longer getting the notifications of sales, etc. my urge to shop has died down.  Out of sight of mind I guess.  I'd say for anyone that has the same problem that I had, try it out and see if you dont feel ten times better with that little change.

Your email is like your phone number, you don't want to give to just anybody.

With that task complete, I'm on to my next one so stay tuned...

~KG

Preparation Meet Simplicity-(life is simple, people are not)

Life is crazy.  Life is stressful, right? Wrong. In fact life itself is quite simple, it's us a people who make things difficult. We live beyond our means, we inundate ourselves with useless information, we procrastinate on everything from paying bills to getting a haircut. Yes, I said a haircut and no it's on the same level as say being stranded on the side of the road but it is a stressor. Think about it, every day that you don't call and make an appointment, is one more day that you're thinking ah I need to get a haircut. A waste of energy and thought space when really all it takes is a simple phone call, appointment made and off the to-do list but better yet of your mind. The "big" things like a flat tire, stay at the forefront but it's the little things like that haircut I just mentioned, that add up, that build up and drain our energy and make those "big" things and life in general even more difficult to handle.

Vacation. That's a nice word isn't it. Everyone gets excited when they hear it. I don't know about you but I feel like a kid at Christmas when I'm planning a vacation and by planning I mean choosing a location. After that it's a one-way ticket to stress town. Travel dates have to be chosen, but wait let's check the calendar first. Then there's the question of how will you get there? What's the most beneficial time-wise? What's the most cost effective? Oh and where are you going to stay? Whats the best deal? Whats the best location? Oh and does it have a pool? Ah finally the reservations have been made, you're home free right? Wrong again. Now you have to decide right down to the last minute what you're going to do when you get there and man are you disappointed when you don't see and do everything on the list because you wanted to make the most out this vacation. Once, the questions started being asked, the fun, the relaxation, the vacation ended. Yup right then and there because like we do with everything else in life we made it complicated.  Planning ahead is one thing, a little preparation can save us a whole lot of headaches but theres a difference between planning and over-analyzing or even micro-managing a situation. WE make life crazy. WE stress ourselves out. WE are the problem but with a little healthy preparation, life can be much simpler and we can be much happier.

Stay tuned for tips and ideas on what I like to call Preparation meet Simplicity.

What's Left Behind?

Recently, and by recently I mean about 20 minutes ago, the thought passed through my mind that my time here could be over in the next 5 minutes, the next 5 years or maybe I'll stick around and see the next 50. It occurred to me how lovely that would be to see and experience that much life.  I think about all the things that my grandmother was apart of, the lives that she touched, the moments that she witnessed and the feelings that she felt along the way.  We're living longer now than so many generations before us did but we're doing so much less with our time.  Ours it seems, is spent on things, and less on people. We fill our lives and our time with more wants and less needs.   I wonder, at times, how much better off we would be if we decided to own less and have more.  More time with family, more memories with friends, more willingness to give to those that are simply grateful to make it to the next day.

Every life has the ability to be amazing and either through simple existence or with a little added effort, every life has the ability to touch and change someone else's in an extraordinary way.  Every soul, no matter how many years it has attached to it will leave behind something worthwhile as long as we focus on one another.

What we do for each other is what truly stands the test of time...we are our legacy.

~KG

Give it a Rest Already!

Recent conversations with friends of mine have brought me to the conclusion that we need to give ourselves a break. On a daily basis it seems, we break ourselves down and pick ourselves apart, for what I'm not quite sure.

It is human nature to judge and criticize but I tend to believe that with a little time and effort that criticism can be turned into motivation and that judgement can be replaced with encouragement. Encouragement and motivation for yourself, to reach your goals and to push past your boundaries.

Life is at times difficult and completely unpredictable. However, if you let every little "flaw" slow you down and change the view that you have of yourself, you're never going to get to where you should be and where you should be, where we all should be is moving forward through this beautiful struggle that is our life.

Glass Walls

That expression "You can't see the forest for the trees" comes to mind when I start to think about things before.  My life, and who I was before. "You can't see the forest for the trees". I'd like to say that's how it was. I'd like to say that I didn't see it happening, that I was unable to see the slow collapse of my own life, but I did. I did see it, I just didn't know how to stop it. The thing that had been my comfort, my escape, my protection from the real world had in one fell swoop thrown me off the edge with no safety net and it hurt like hell when I hit the bottom. I read somewhere that you don't appreciate what you have until its taken away. I, thankfully, didn't have everything taken away. I did however have it all slip far enough away that I almost couldn't reach it so I feel like I can say I understand that expression now and I wholeheartedly agree. To say that I was irresponsible would be an understatement. However, the real issue here is how ungrateful I was when I made the decision that brought me to the place that no one wants to go to, a place where I was grasping for everything that I loved and praying that I'd be able to hold on. It became very apparent that I needed to remove myself from what I had considered my comfort zone. Once outside of it though, I found myself feeling lost and a bit confused.  I didn't quite know where I belonged or who I was supposed to be. This, however was temporary and as it turns out the thing that gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of security, my identity, was in fact, the one thing that was threatening to take it all away. Once it was gone it took some time to fully see, but there I was. There I was, and when I looked around, there were the people that I cared about. Apparently they'd been there the whole time, telling me the harsh truths but I couldn't hear it, waiting for me to grab their hand but I couldn't reach it, and loving me unconditionally but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel any of it until I stepped outside of the glass walls.

100 Days of Change

I'm sure that everyone has heard of 100 days of happy.  Well, this is my version of that with a little twist.  Instead of 100 days of things that make me happy, this is going to be the start of 100 days of me making changes. 

Whether they are big or small, I have things that I want to change about myself or about my life, we all do.  Relationships, bad habits, career paths, the list is never ending, but whether it's a simple lifestyle change or a life changing choice, it's not going to happen on it's own.  I have to take the first step, make the first move, put in the effort to make these changes happen.  Daily habits don't take root overnight, so when it comes to things like diet and exercise, I don't expect immediate results.  The same goes with a major decision like going back to school, changing my career path or even moving to a new place.  I can decide to do it, but it's not going to happen overnight so I have to have patience with myself and with life in general.  Slow progress is still progress. 

I have so many things that I want to change, that when the 100 days are over I probably won't be finished, but the process will have begun.  The ball will be rolling.  Each day I will come here and write all about the "change of the day" and each day that passes I hope to see a difference in myself and my life.  Each day I hope to create good habits, make better choices and when all is said and done be healthier and happier because really, isn't that the point. 

Tomorrow will be day 1, let's see how this goes...

~KG