Adventurous Mom

Archive for the ‘fear’ Category

Do you ever get par­a­lyzed with mak­ing a deci­sion?  Is it dif­fi­cult for you to decide when hard choices con­front you?  You get scared and you get fear­ful, so instead you do nothing?

Well, inde­ci­sion is some­times a curse that befalls us all.  We then pro­cras­ti­nate and then get noth­ing done.  Napoleon Hill sum­ma­rizes this par­a­digm in his book Think and Grow Rich and why it is dam­ag­ing to our suc­cess. “ACCURATE analy­sis of over 25,000 men and women who had expe­ri­enced fail­ure, dis­closed the fact that LACK OF DECISION was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of FAILURE.”

We argue to our­selves that we need more time to think about it, and then we take more time, but often the deci­sion gets cloudier the longer we think about things.

There are sev­eral types of per­son­al­i­ties that strug­gle with inde­ci­sion.  There are those that make choices quickly think­ing they have all of the infor­ma­tion they need, only to back pedal on their deci­sion days or even hours after mak­ing it.  This is quite frus­trat­ing, even for these peo­ple because they have a dif­fi­cult time get­ting things done, they have to undo and redo.  Energy and time is wasted for their lack of decision.

The other per­son­al­ity type is those that fear any kind of deci­sion at all.  I call these peo­ple Ana­lytic Paralytics…frozen with infor­ma­tion over­load.  At some point in our lives most peo­ple hit this cross­road, espe­cially when big deci­sions need to be made. We want so badly not to make mis­takes, so we gather and gather and hunt for infor­ma­tion.  We ask ques­tions, we seek advice, we get opinions….but the more infor­ma­tion we gather, the more dif­fi­cult it becomes to decide!

Inde­ci­sion is par­a­lyz­ing, it keeps us from our goals and our dreams!  One thing for cer­tain is that it will be unlikely that any one per­son will have 100% of the knowl­edge nec­es­sary to make a good deci­sion, it’s just impos­si­ble!  So, you are doomed to make bad deci­sions in your life, and that’s okay.  Keep­ing this in mind, how bad might some of your deci­sions become?

Most deci­sions that we make are not irre­versible, we can change them back if need be.  I would even go as far as to say that 90% of the deci­sions we make are totally irre­versible.  If we decide we are not sat­is­fied with the out­come of our deci­sion, we can change it.  So for the bulk of our deci­sions, they likely have lit­tle to no con­se­quence, and are eas­ily fix­able if some­thing goes wrong.

For the 10% of dif­fi­cult deci­sions that may not be irre­versible, we can ask our­selves these series of questions:

1. Do I have choices?  What are my choices? (A good teacher once told me one option is not a choice, it’s a con­se­quence, two make a dilemma, and three make a choice.)
2. Am I lean­ing toward one decision/choice and how do I feel about that choice? (Keep­ing in mind that fear is a healthy emo­tion sur­round­ing change and decision.)
3. What do I have to gain if I make this choice? And what do I have to lose?
4. If I lose, how dif­fi­cult will it be for me to recover?
5. Lastly, what do I really want?

Going through a deci­sion rubric such as this really brings down one’s fear lev­els regard­ing deci­sion mak­ing.  Our Ego mind is so quick to judge us! (How dare it!) It puts up the fear as safe­guards to doing any­thing out­side of your com­fort level.  But it inad­ver­tently sab­o­tages our suc­cess (are you going to let this hap­pen? How dare it!)

Lastly, don’t let your inde­ci­sion be the rea­son why you fail as Napoleon Hill points out.  Make a deci­sion, stick with it for a while, and if it doesn’t serve you, then change!  What do you really have to lose?

Join on in the con­ver­sa­tion and leave a com­ment below!!

For now, Many Adven­tures to You!

Maken­zie

I have recently been observ­ing some folks that are resist­ing change…and isn’t it funny how the thing that we most WANT in life can elude us, until we give up the WANTING altogether?

I am sure many peo­ple have done the same thing.  As soon as they give up the NEED to have some­thing a cer­tain way, then life all of a sud­den gets eas­ier and they get the thing they were look­ing for.  In fact, it usu­ally just falls into their lap with­out hav­ing to try.  It’s the ol’ “A watched pot doesn’t boil!”

You can also say that it’s, HOLDING on TOO TIGHT!  And when I was dis­cussing this exact resis­tance to change over lunch with my hus­band, imme­di­ately my very favorite movie came to mind, Top Gun.  The rea­son why the pro­tag­o­nist, Mav­er­ick ever got the oppor­tu­nity to train as a fighter pilot was because his pre­de­ces­sor, Cougar, resigned as a fighter pilot after an intense exchange with a Russ­ian Mig Fighter.

The res­ig­na­tion went like this, “I’m hold­ing on too tight Mav­er­ick, I’ve lost the Edge!” He turned in his wings and resigned as a pilot.

What really hap­pened to Cougar is that became attached to the out­come.  He wanted to con­trol the out­come, which for him meant, he didn’t want to die in a com­bat exchange (well, most peo­ple wouldn’t, but fighter pilots train to elim­i­nate that fear alto­gether!!)  That very fear and desire to con­trol the out­come changed his abil­ity to be an effec­tive Top Gun pilot. For any effec­tive fighter pilot, you must fly on instinct and be able to TRUST your­self, there is no time for thought or con­trol.  You can­not even fathom the out­come, once you do, you have lost the edge, you no longer fly on split sec­ond instinct and you can’t FEEL your intuition.

The same is true for entre­pre­neurs.  You are skill­ful at what you are doing. You decided to become an entre­pre­neur for some rea­son, and that rea­son is that you are GOOD, no, you are GREAT at what you do.  Becom­ing a skill­ful entre­pre­neur is sim­i­lar to how fighter pilots train.  They train, and make mistakes.…correct their mis­takes, and train more.  And Repeat.

Effec­tive entre­pre­neurs do the same thing! Try, mis­take, cor­rect, repeat!

No fighter pilot on their first run will ever be per­fect, it’s IMPOSSIBLE!  As will being an effec­tive entre­pre­neur, you will not be per­fect your first week, IMPOSSIBLE (or ever for that mat­ter, so stop try­ing!)  Trust me, I fell on my face so many times as a new entre­pre­neur,  its amaz­ing that I didn’t need plas­tic surgery to put my nose back in place!  It takes train­ing, try­ing and mis­tak­ing to refine your skill.

Let me repeat…you must make mis­takes! Every nor­mal and effec­tive entre­pre­neur does!  (Phew, so glad I am normal!)

And when it comes to the hold­ing on too tight, we see that a lot with entre­pre­neurs and their fear around money.  They now all of a sud­den dis­con­nect from their intu­ition and instinct and start want­ing to con­trol the out­come!  They must not be try­ing hard enough, they must do more, they must be failing…and on and on… Such a com­mon story!!

And like a fighter pilot, you, as an entre­pre­neur have cer­tain intrin­sic abil­i­ties to go with the flow.  When you set your inten­tions, fol­low your intu­ition, and TRUST that your actions will be guided with­out too much thought, there is the magic flow.   It is the same flow that the pilots feel when they are at the top of their game.  Lit­tle con­trol is needed, it feels almost effortless.

Mal­com Glad­well wrote a whole book on this sub­ject of trust­ing your intu­ition called “Blink”.  He writes, “…I hope that by the end of this book, you will believe it as well — that the task of mak­ing sense of our­selves and our behav­ior requires that we acknowl­edge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of ratio­nal analysis.”

So, my ques­tion to you, whether you’re an entre­pre­neur, a  “non-preneur”, or a fighter pilot:  What are you hold­ing on to so tightly that causes you to lose your edge?

I’d love to hear!  And if you’re curi­ous at all about how I help peo­ple find and KEEP their EDGE, visit my page about Suc­cess Coach­ing Or just visit me any­way just to say hi!!  I love company!

Many Adven­tures to You!!

Maken­zie

I really thought long and hard about writ­ing a post like this. I don’t like to seem vul­ner­a­ble, I def­i­nitely don’t like to seem like I don’t have things under con­trol.  But then I real­ized, hey this is life, and some­times life reminds you that you are not really the one in con­trol.  For a Type A…wanna be Type B, this is some­times a hard con­cept for me to grasp and I begin often by say­ing , “Well…all you gotta do is.…”

Then to no avail, my “All I gotta do is” doesn’t work.  In my sit­u­a­tion, we are con­fronting immi­nent surgery with my hus­band, back surgery.  Quite pos­si­bly the worst surgery that is out there. (Oh I pray he doesn’t read this any­time soon!)  Because I keep telling him that every­thing is going to be awe­some.  And I keep try­ing to be strong.  And then I real­ize that I’m not as strong as I want to be.  I’m not really strong at all. His surgery is out of my hands, literally.

This will be our third surgery in three years.  Note I said “our” because even though he’s the one that gets cut, I get to heal right along with him. I get to endure the sleep­less nights, the doc­tors’ vis­its, the pain, the adverse reactions…etc.…etc…   I remem­ber in sick­ness and in health part, but I don’t remem­ber sign­ing on for the grumpi­ness, the pain, the endur­ing difficulties.

So at these times of my extreme emo­tional weak­ness, I real­ize that I still may have some thing to learn.  Some­thing about myself, some­thing about life.  And as I am try­ing to quell my anx­ious­ness about his upcom­ing pro­ce­dure and hos­pi­tal stay, I am com­forted by the fact that I have made the right choice to cre­ate a loca­tion inde­pen­dent busi­ness.  (Guess where my new office is going to be? Yep — the hos­pi­tal room!) The Uni­verse smiled on me when I needed it to.

In addi­tion, I am real­iz­ing that I am not alone, as alone as I may feel.  An invari­able net­work of sup­port is com­ing out of the wood­work from my neigh­bor who has cre­ated a din­ner rota­tion for our fam­ily for the first few weeks; my mother and sis­ters who are going to help me with the chil­dren; my coach­ing friends who have expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions and are help­ing to walk me through the emo­tional cri­sis; my karate friends who are lend­ing us their Lazy Boy chair; my good friends who are going to sit with me and play scrab­ble to keep my mind busy dur­ing the surgery…and the list goes on.

So now, although, I feel like life is com­pletely out of my con­trol, life is show­ing me com­pas­sion.  It is reas­sur­ing me that even though I have lost the per­cep­tion of con­trol, the uni­verse, like a good mother has stepped in to hold my hand and take me step by step through the process.

I never try to ask WHY.  Because Why is such a futile ques­tion.  Instead I ask What…What am I learn­ing?  It has now become appar­ent to me that my gift here is to receive compassion.…so that I may learn what com­pas­sion truly is, and some­day soon rec­i­p­ro­cate that compassion.

Thank you to every­one ahead of time for your pos­i­tive thoughts for our fam­ily dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time!

Often when life doesn’t go your way, it’s not because it’s going against you, it’s just show­ing you another way to look at the world!  ~Makenzie

Many Adven­tures to you!

It started the Thurs­day before New Years, a last minute trip to take the kids to the snow.  We promised them we would do a snow trip dur­ing Win­ter break, and so I found a cheap Hotel (not cheap as in dive…but cheap as in $49!) in Reno, and we set sail to the biggest lit­tle city in the world.  Luck­ily, there is a Cir­cus Cir­cus there for the kids to immerse them­selves in what I call “gam­bling for kids” or the arcade.  To be hon­est, it was my hus­band that was the big roller here.  You should have seen the streams of tick­ets that guy won!

Reno was fan­tas­tic and the kids had a blast…  here is “Fluffy the snowman”:

we decided to make our snow day a snowman-challenge mak­ing day.  I just hope that the Snow­man doesn’t real­ize the kids were call­ing him Fluffy, I am sure he would have pre­ferred to be called “Ice­Man” or some­thing like that.

On our way home from Reno,  I get the con­fir­ma­tion that we will be need­ing to drive to Los Ange­les the next day.  I was get­ting rid of my Range Rover, and the buyer was in LA.  The Range Rover was a casu­alty of my deci­sion to retire.  Not being active in the busi­ness any­more did not neces­si­tate the need for the  vehi­cle  and the tax issues would get sticky, so it had to go.  Plus, I was unwill­ing to drop $925/mo on a car pay­ment from my per­sonal funds ugh! Cer­tain logic ruled in this instance.

We spent one night in our own beds, and the next morn­ing, on the road again for five hours to LA.  The accom­mo­da­tions were not as nice, the hotel was 2xs the cost and there were no blink­ing lights or danc­ing clowns.  Yet, as always, we man­aged to have fun, and made our way to Her­mosa Beach the next day to bask in the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia sun.  70 degrees, warm sand, surfers in the water, it was a typ­i­cal SoCal win­ter.  Ahhh, I love the sun.

The hand-off of the Range Rover occurred seam­lessly, the new owner, a late 20’s some­thing New Yorker-turned-LAer-turned-High-Roller was now in proud pos­ses­sion of the beau­ti­ful sil­ver SUV.  I showed him the bells and whis­tles, he signed the papers, and that was the last that I saw of my lux­ury vehicle.

We then got on “the” 405 free­way to “the” 710 and were on our way to the Long Beach aquar­ium, when it hit me…the lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.  I tried to cough, no.  I tried to gag, no.  It wouldn’t go away, then I got short of breath. Was this a panic attack?  The tears started to roll down my face, I was dri­ving a car that I was unfa­mil­iar with, on a busy LA freeway…oh no. Snif­fle, cough, gag, sniffle.

I just gave up my prized pos­ses­sion, handed the keys over to a per­fect stranger! I loved that car.…people loved that car.  If I had a dol­lar for every time a man said to me, “My wife so badly wants a car like that…!”

My dar­ling hus­band was speech­less because I had been so “matter-of-fact” about need­ing to get rid of the car for the last two months.  “But my Satel­lite radio, and my seat heaters…I don’t have those in the Explorer!!”, I con­tin­ued to snif­fle and cough and gag.  It just won’t be the same.

I parked the rental car, and dried off my eyes, and heard a deep-down voice say to me:

“No Maken­zie, this is not what you want, that is your Ego talk­ing and not your true self.  Your true self wants to spend those pre­cious moments with your kids.  If you keep that car, you will need to get a job instead of spend­ing time with your kids. Your true self wants to design the life that you want.  Your ego wants things and approval.  Your ego has failed you count­less times.  Now is the time to lis­ten to your true self.”

That car wasn’t who I was, it didn’t mat­ter to my kids what kind of car I drove.  It was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make log­i­cally, or financially…but the ego and emo­tional play was far big­ger than I anticipated.

I think this is what hap­pens often when peo­ple get “stuck” in a sit­u­a­tion.  They fear that dia­logue with their ego…the one that asks them, “What will peo­ple think?” or tells them “You are not smart enough to try some­thing new, you will surely fail…and then…what will peo­ple say?” They are so afraid that their Ego, rather than their True Self, is right, that they stall and say things like, “It’s just not that easy” or “Life is complicated.”

Well, life is not com­pli­cated, as I am here to tell you.  Our fam­ily con­tin­ues to over­come adver­sity with phys­i­cal injuries, career changes, fledg­ling finan­cial mar­kets.  But really, our life is simple:

We Love each other, We spend time together, We enjoy adventure.

That’s it.

Many adven­tures to you!

Maken­zie

This sum­mer has been quite an adven­ture! I have to admit, for the first time in almost five years, I actu­ally was able to spend almost two weeks straight with my fam­ily!! This was very unusual because we have been grow­ing our busi­ness for the last four years and we have had lit­tle fam­ily time. The work-life bal­ance is def­i­nitely a chal­lenge for me, and I rou­tinely feel like I fail at one or the other.

But as we embarked on our 11 day adven­ture to Yel­low­stone, I was excited and anx­ious at the same time. I did not know what would hap­pen over the next eleven days.…I love and live for adven­ture, but I knew that this trip would be dif­fer­ent. I must have had a pre­mo­ni­tion about what was to occur.

The adven­ture was filled with an Emer­gency Room visit, Travel Trailer fail­ures, Thun­der­storms, Vom­it­ing, Diar­rhea, Mos­qui­toes the size of birds, Truck fail­ures, and on and on.…! How did we man­age? For those that were for­tu­nate enough to fol­low my vaca­tion on my Face­book, you were able to see the daily strug­gles that we encoun­tered on our vaca­tion. Many peo­ple com­mented that they would have quit by this time! But NOT us! We were deter­mined to have fun irre­gard­less of the dif­fi­cul­ties that were fac­ing us.

It had been a long time since we were able to be together as a fam­ily like this and to come through this tri­umph the way that we did. The kids were Fan­tas­tic! They were such troop­ers and flex­i­ble and strong! We were all deter­mined to be adven­tur­ous and have fun! We had such a dif­fi­cult time in the last two years with the strug­gles of a grow­ing busi­ness and a hurt daddy. This trip had more mean­ing than any other fam­ily trip I can remember.

Yel­low­stone was amaz­ing, truly a won­der of the world and per­haps one of the most beau­ti­ful places I have seen. The rivers were wide, the grasses were green, and the sky was def­i­nitely the most blue that I have seen. It was so refresh­ing. On day 9 we were on our way out of the park, dri­ving through Wyoming, on our way to Pow­ell, WY to visit friends. My busi­ness part­ner called.… I was anx­ious to find out the news of a meet­ing that he attended in my absence. Sud­denly my fun stopped. The news was not what I was expect­ing and I became anx­ious. So anx­ious, I felt that my vaca­tion needed to stop and I needed to be back at work today. I became so anx­ious, I didn’t stop wor­ry­ing for a day and a half.

The next day was spent at our very good friend’s house in Wyoming, which I must say is absolutely God’s coun­try! Rolling fields of wheat are con­trasted with fields of corn and painted hills of red, orange and burnt umber. The sky is like sap­phires in the evening and the clouds are beau­ti­ful. The neigh­bors are friendly and every­one waves at a pass­ing vehi­cle. The atmos­phere is relaxed, and fam­ily is more impor­tant than the dol­lar here. Imag­ine that.… They are out-riding the “reces­sion” because peo­ple in Wyoming just make it work. They are in it for the long haul, not work­ing for the money, but work­ing to cre­ate a pur­pose for them­selves and their families.

The Fourth of July parade in Cody WY was a cel­e­bra­tion of a cul­ture that I do not rou­tinely see in the hus­tle and bus­tle of the SF Bay Area. It was a cel­e­bra­tion of com­mu­nity and a cel­e­bra­tion of true free­dom. It was the first day that I real­ized I was not liv­ing my life truly free. I was trapped in my work and also in my fear.

The last five years of my life have been a strug­gle for riches and glory. I felt that if I strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed that I would be able to work less and have more time with my fam­ily. Boy, I really did not know how much I was miss­ing my kids! I had the par­a­digm shift that over this quest for finan­cial free­dom, I may have been going about it all wrong! Oh no! Has it all been wrong? All of a sud­den the money did not mat­ter to me so much. I would have given every­thing up just to have more time with them. I was liv­ing in such fear and felt so shack­led to the busi­ness that my time and my emo­tions were trapped. I was a caged bird.

But that day in Cody and the three days we spent dri­ving home, I did some seri­ous search­ing. How could I be free from worry? How could I get more time with my kids? And I was not going to accept “I can’t” for an answer. My mom…and bless her for teach­ing us this.…taught us that “Can’t NEVER could!” There is a pos­si­bil­ity for everything.

Often as I do, I pick up books in stores, or just out of curios­ity and some­times hang onto them for a time before I start read­ing. I picked up a book called “The Secret of the Ages” by Robert Col­lier. Not really know­ing what it was going to say, it really looked inter­est­ing, or at least inter­est­ing enough to buy it on sale for ten bucks! I don’t always nec­es­sar­ily feel that one book is bet­ter than another. I really feel that a lot of them have mes­sages that are very impor­tant. This book was really able to speak to me in a time where I really needed to receive the mes­sage. A cou­ple of notable quotes from Collier:

“Begin to free your­self at once by doing all that is pos­si­ble with the means you have, and as you pro­ceed in this spirit the way will open for you to do more. ” “Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself every­thing needed for its fulfillment. ”

The tim­ing was right for me to free myself from the inter­nal fear that I was expe­ri­enc­ing and real­ize that there was an option for me to change my sit­u­a­tion. Not only my sit­u­a­tion of fear, but my sit­u­a­tion of miss­ing my children.

So as I am mov­ing for­ward with this inten­tion, I am work­ing on find­ing ways to work on my Lifestyle Design. Work­ing less.… Mak­ing more. Evolv­ing from my exist­ing place in my life into a more sat­is­fy­ing and rich lifestyle. Stay tuned! The adven­ture is just beginning!

Every­day and every week, I keep expect­ing life to get “eas­ier” but some­how it never really gets eas­ier, but there are days that I work really hard and feel accom­plished and there are days that I barely feel like I am keep­ing my head above water! Up and down…up and down…up and down. What I find that with each expe­ri­ence I learn more and my tol­er­ances for dif­fi­cult things improves. What I am also find­ing is that the world around me isn’t nec­es­sar­ily chang­ing, but I am chang­ing and my responses are chang­ing.
I am a self-proclaimed over-achiever. This is a bless­ing and a curse at the same time. It has cer­tainly served me well in my career. On the reverse side of the coin, I real­ize that I some­times expect too much of myself. I expect to have a fan­tas­tic and per­fect day every­day! I think I will always expect that, but there are forces that are out of my con­trol that occur in this world that inten­tion­ally or unin­ten­tion­ally seek to ruin my day. I acknowl­edge those occur­rences.… and what I’ve learned to do now is be curi­ous about my response! Instead of get­ting angry, sad, mad or depressed, instead of dwelling on the issues for days and day and los­ing a lot of sleep, I become curi­ous about the prob­lem and my response to the prob­lem. This is a really dif­fi­cult task because I just want to react. I wanted to be Mamma Bear and go after the prob­lem that was con­fronting my first grader, I wanted to dig my claws into the prob­lem and tear it up!! But that response would not have been ben­e­fi­cial to me, or to the teacher for that mat­ter. I look back and ask myself, “Did I respond well to that sit­u­a­tion?” How could I have bet­ter han­dled it? That was very stress­ful, and I think I did okay. I would give myself a 6/10. (Here I go judg­ing myself.) But a 6 is far bet­ter than would have been my response level of a 2 last year! I’m improv­ing, I’m becom­ing aware, I’m learn­ing how to self cor­rect.
My point in talk­ing about my responses is that I am learn­ing it is okay to make mis­takes. But the real mea­sure of matu­rity is how do you respond to those mis­takes, and how do you respond when life throws you a curve ball? Are you the bat­ter that adjusts her swing? Or are you the bat­ter that swings expect­ing every ball to be a fast­ball, then get mad at the pitcher for throw­ing a curve? Real­ize that life hap­pens, it hap­pens up and down…up and down. How do you respond to the ups and downs? Adjust your­self, your response, and be curious!

Yes, I dropped the ball this week. At least that’s what it felt like. I have to admit that as hard as I try to bal­ance and spin all of my plates, or to jug­gle all of my balls, I, like all, am human. Like a lot of full time work­ing moms, I have a lot of things going on at once. I have my first shift which is my work shift which is career work, my sec­ond shift or wife and mom shift, and then some­where in between I make room for self-renewal, self– care, and per­sonal devel­op­ment. All three are a pri­or­ity to me, but by-far the most del­i­cate of all my respon­si­bil­i­ties is that of being a mother. At this point I am not only respon­si­ble for myself but I have two very spe­cial lit­tle men for which I take respon­si­bil­ity. Luck­ily my lit­tle men are very resilient and for­giv­ing. This week I received word from my son’s teacher that unless his writ­ing skills improved there may be a pos­si­bil­ity he wouldn’t move onto sec­ond grade. “Ouch!” That news stung worse than a dozen wasp stings.

How could I be such a bad mother? How could I drop this frag­ile ball? How did I not see this com­ing? What other balls might I be drop­ping next? I was com­ing off of my “I’m so lucky to be alive” High.…how can this hap­pen now?

I was dis­traught to say the least. It took me sev­eral days, meet­ings with the prin­ci­pal and sched­uled meet­ings with the teacher, phone calls to my mom, dis­cus­sions with my sis­ters and hus­band, my coach, and prob­a­bly half a dozen oth­ers to real­ize that yes Virginia.…I am human. Per­haps my reac­tion was an over-reaction because of the emo­tional nature of this sit­u­a­tion. But another hard les­son learned.…I must real­ize and be okay with the pain that may come by my human fail­ures. Fail­ing is merely a judg­ment, so did I really fail? Who is my biggest judge of this, ME?

Tak­ing a step back, my hus­band and I real­ize that our First Grader WILL be mov­ing onto Sec­ond Grade next year. He is read­ing at Third Grade level and zooms through math like a lit­tle savant. He is a Cy Young award win­ning pitcher that stinks at bat­ting. He needs some bat­ting prac­tice, and he’ll even­tu­ally be mak­ing base hits and RBIs.

So, solu­tion num­ber one is get­ting my son the help he needs with writing.…EASY! Solu­tion num­ber two is learn­ing how to curb my emo­tional response when I have these big upsets. Not so easy, but do-able. In pre­vi­ous blogs, I describe the pain/pleasure con­tin­uum and how life’s dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions are used to teach us lessons. This was a big les­son for me, for two rea­sons: 1. I feel I should com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively with my children’s teach­ers so I don’t get blind-sighted with this kind of news. 2. Antic­i­pate (but don’t expect) emo­tional upsets and learn a con­struc­tive emo­tional response to these set-backs. I don’t think that I refuse to get “mad, sad, angry, or frus­trated”, but allow myself to feel these emo­tions with­out being per­son­ally destruc­tive with these emo­tions. They’re healthy emo­tions to set us back on the right course, help us regain our bal­ance and then to become bet­ter bal­anced so we don’t get thrown off-kilter so eas­ily again.

So, yes, I am human. I do have “bad days”, I am learn­ing to keep my bad days fewer and far between. I strive to live each day enjoy­ably, with pas­sion and doing what I love. My chil­dren deserve a mom that is passionate.…teaching them this life les­son is invaluable!