We're here, we may as well enjoy it

This thought started visiting me often, when I would find myself waiting in a line, on hold for something, existing in some between-space of time and/or place that really didn’t seem all that exciting, that wasn’t really my preference, but was what it needed to be then.

“I’m here; I may as well enjoy it.” I found myself saying. And, magically, I would almost automatically find a way to enjoy it. Something would become comical, I would come more into the present, or I would feel more like the whole situation was more mine, because I was choosing to make it into enjoyment. And I think that’s what it’s about, remembering that we deserve enjoyment, to live life in joy, regardless of the circumstances

Attention and appreciation make anything special. And when we can turn the mundane into the magical, I guess that’s called alchemy.

Do something because you want to, not because of what you expect in return

Do something because you want to, not because of what you expect in return, or because you expect something, anything, as a result. In that way, in this manner, it can only ever be positive. You are doing what you want, for the joy of it. This is mom advice (advice from my mom) that came through over the years in a simple moment It continues to reveal, reorient and simplify in all it touches in my life.

Orient toward the action, for the joy and the purity of the action, rather than the outcome. And whatever comes, will come, and it will be welcome.

For Mom who has done many things…

Release the timeline

A couple months into living in Venice Beach I had this moment, biking home from a friend’s on a Sunday evening along boardwalk, then turning on Speedway and pulling to my alley (mine! this was now home!) when I realized, like really realized, that I lived at the beach.

I’d always wanted to live summers at the beach growing up, have a home there, a place to stay rather than day trips in and out to the Jersey Shore. I was, I am, grateful for that, yes, and still, I craved languid summer nights with melting ice cream cones and slow sunsets and friends from other school districts, could feel the little bliss of what it’d be like to wake up to walk in the sand. Now, all these years later, but not a moment too late or too early, I was here. I am here.

Release the timeline. Because, the time is always divine; the timing is always right. (And maybe, sometimes it’s a boomerang?)

The difference between 4 miles and 24 miles

Is actually nothing, except creating the space for it.

I had this thought during a recent 4.5-mile Wednesday night run with Venice Run Club. I ran the Los Angeles Marathon in late March, blooming into spring, and since then, I’ve enjoyed flowing back into a more varied fitness routine, which usually includes running about one day a week. I was pushing at that point in that run, calibrating to keep myself at that intersection of personal challenge and ease + enjoyment, a space where I’d found much to come in the past and consider ideal. It felt like so many moments of so many other runs in that all it felt like there was, was that very moment. It didn’t matter the length of the run it was part of.

In it, in that very moment, and all we have ever is this very moment, whenever and wherever that is, this actually doesn’t feel any different from any other run. Four miles, to fourteen miles, to 24 and more. You just prepare differently, and create the space. Train up to it, know you can do it, take the time to do it. And when you’re in it, you’re just with it.

I’ve heard a similar recommendation in relation to thinking about wealth, or financial abundance: It’s just about creating the mental space for it. In that, the deservingness for it. $80k and $80m is a different scope/ It takes up different space, and still, it’s all money. How do we prepare for it? ( “What if” positive thought play is a recommendation, especially for women, because women are socially conditioned to do this much less than men, of thinking and playing in the space of financial abundance. So, what if, I receive a financial windfall, X amount? What would I do with that? How would I manage it? What would I want to do with it?)

I wrote some additional things about running and the marathon, and the whole process (writing, running, all of it) felt expansive and cathartic. Posts are:

The luckiest person in the world

The other day I decided I was the luckiest person in the world.

I decided I was the luckiest person in the world, because “the” world is just my world, and your world is yours. I hope you’re the luckiest person in the world, your world, too, because you deserve to be.

When I decided this, I began to affirm it, in writing, in saying, in thoughts and self-talk throughout the day. I almost dropped that—caught it. Lucky. The light turned green. Lucky. That meeting got moved. Lucky!

There’s science around how and why things like this work: It’s related to our Reticular Activating System, which layers between the conscious and subconscious and decides what gets through to us, and what gets filtered out. (More here from Entrepreneur.) When I started to think of myself as lucky, I pressed play on the little program that generated all the proof I needed to believe that. And in that process and proof, perception becomes reality.

It’s been such a fun way to play, and to reframe my days. So, wishing a wonderful day to the luckiest person in the world. You, me and all of us.

I trust my future self

I started saying this to myself, at some point back when I was in Brooklyn, as a way to come back to the now. To keep from falling into a spiral about a hypothetical future, from experiencing what I’ve sometimes heard referred to in the Vedic community as “future suffering”—suffering in the now (which was really a nice now, back then, and now, too!), mucking it up over a maybe.

“I trust my future self.” Even when I thought I wasn’t ready, for that big opportunity, that other thing I didn’t see coming, I really had been. I had received it, and I had come to believe in the innate rightness of it, even if it didn’t happen right away. I had a decades-long track record of things really working out. Future me deserved the trust of past me, and the now me. So, I let it go. Let her go.

As I started saying this to myself more, I was giving myself even more reason to believe. I’d go to add something to my Calendar and see it was already there. I’d open my phone to write something down, and it was done. I’d think of an email I meant to respond to, and I’d already sent it. Future me really didn’t need to prove anything else, but I guess she wanted to. Notes to self; jokes on me, and jokes for me. So, now I do more (less) to just let her be.

For Kelly, with whom I found deep trust in myself (we both did!) in those early and formative professional years, and with whom I formed a deep and formative friendship.