In the daily walking post, I introduced the grubblers, who made noise about how much and how fast and how far I was (or wasn’t) walking. They were also the ones with helpful reminders like these:

• “Somebody might be watching you through their window.”
• “Oh no, there’s a car coming. What are they thinking about me?”

I think we all know logically that most people couldn’t care less about who’s walking down the street. But the truth of it is, those thoughts aren’t the result of the behavior of others are they?

They’re about you and the stories you tell yourself.

Here’s the thing:

As long as you judge yourself, you will assume you are judged by others.

If part of what’s holding you back from enjoying the outdoors or any other way you want to rock your world, is the belief that you shouldn’t be seen, what would be possible for you if you released it?

• You wouldn’t have to hide out in your basement to move your body.
• You could join that yoga class you’ve been waiting on ‘skinny’ for.
• You could move through the world, never having to deal with the “What if they’re looking.” grubblers. They are a tiresome energy drain.
• You could like yourself no matter what the outside looks like.

Practice Promotes Safety

When the grubblers get noisy, they are only trying to keep you safe. When catastrophe persistently fails to strike, they become more comfortable and quiet.

Notice, I didn’t start feeling safe and shifting the belief by sitting around thinking about it. You have to actually do the thing you want to do, and find out that most likely catastrophe isn’t going to strike, and if it does, you are strong and capable of facing it.

One of the ways to get up and start actually doing the thing you’re worried you’re not good enough to do is to imagine what would happen if the “what if” came true.

If one of your “what if” catastrophes is  “They might see me” what would be the worst that would happen? How would you handle that?

I will share this story of recent exposure with you. I headed out on a walk one day with the small-fry by my side on his scooter. He was excited to go up the hill near our house so he could coast down lickety-split. I had worked in the garden, had on an old pair of capri sweats, a sports bra, baggy tank top, and hadn’t shaved my legs in a while. You get the picture. It was going to be a short walk before taking a shower and getting cleaned up to go on a family outing.

As we rounded the corner, here was a woman walking with two of the small-fry’s friends from school. They immediately gave a shout, inviting us to go to the park with them.  I had never formally met the mother, only seeing her in passing. What a lovely first impression of me she was getting, I thought.

Oh, how the grubblers howled.  All my newly found comfort with walking alone outside was sliding fast at the prospect of being seen, even for a minute, in my current state.  I started making excuses for why we wouldn’t have time to go. The mother said if I had things to do the small fry could just go with them and she’d drop him back later.

Spurred no doubt by my recent releasing of these exposure worries, something snapped in my mind and I say what I was denying myself. Based on my judgment of my outward appearance, I was ready to toss the potential for a lovely walk and conversation.  I shrugged off my worries and we joined their troop.

The short version end of the story is that we ended up walking and talking and sitting in the park, and then proceeded back to our deck where my husband joined us while the boys played. What I would have missed out on was three hours of great conversation about a variety of topics; a connection with a like-minded person. Neither my state of dress, nor the shape of my body had any bearing on the enjoyment we had that afternoon.

What are you missing out on by keeping yourself hidden away, literally or figuratively?

The daily walking post sparked a number of conversations.

It resulted in people finding some clarity and ease around thoughts like this:

“I don’t want to:

• exercise in a gym
• walk outside
• take a yoga class
• go biking
• etc. ad nauseum

because I feel so exposed.”

And the related:

“When I’m skinny I can do that.”

If something’s proving useful, I like to dig a little deeper.

Shall we?

What’s behind this thought? What is so indecent about the possibility of someone seeing you merely walking down the street, or god forbid, exercising? I know the logical part of your brain says, “Nothing.”

But, if you enjoy any of these things and are hesitating to do them, not all of you believes your left brain, does it?

In the walking post, I touched on what I used to assume others would think: look at that poor desperate fat girl trying to get thinner. Truth is, that’s what used to cross my mind when I saw a larger person walking outside.

We judge and/or project onto others what we most worry about in ourselves.

The belief that we are indecent if we don’t look a particular way before merely walking out our door to enjoy ourselves is a snippet of what?

“I am not worthy just as I am.”

We’ll talk about shifting that in the next post.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear what’s come up for you after reading this.

How many times in a day do you deny your truth?

Often when you hear lofty notions like expressing your truth, it seems like the reference is to some larger, grander expression, that you have yet to figure out.

However, what’s true about your truth is that the little daily expressions are the perfect place to start. Maybe the only place.

Do you express when you feel hurt and slighted, or  silently pretend nothing’s wrong for fear of rejection? Do you express when you feel inexplicable joy, or hold it in for fear of looking silly?

The energy expended to keep these truths under wraps wears you down. This hiding of yourself is part of what keeps you tired and disconnected.

Give it a try for a day. Maybe just once in a day. Start with the easy things like happiness or gratitude.

Perhaps your ready to bravely dabble  in expressing something that isn’t to your liking rather than just going along.

Speak it with ownership.

“I feel hurt when…”

“I love that….”

“I prefer this…”

Stating things in this fashion teaches you to own your truth. Feel the difference in giving away your truth to the external:

“You make me so…”

“They really ought to…”

“Maybe we could…”

Fear is the reason we hide our truth. Expressing it is not about confrontation. It is about clarity. It releases fear and builds trust. It often leads to surprising freedom and greater connection to the people who are important to you.

Start a truth practice today. Let me know what you discover.

Today marks 90 days of daily walking for me.

Those of you who know where I live might wonder why someone would begin an outdoor walking practice at the end of November. I mean really, that’s when we’re usually really getting geared up for winter.

I wondered why as well. All of a sudden it just felt like the right thing to do.

For most of my life I’ve been in and out of an exercise regime of some sort. I enjoy lifting weights, yoga, biking, walking, golfing. But I had turned all of those activities into a means to an end.

I was desperate to be thinner. They were the vehicle to get me there. You can imagine how enjoyable they were when I was counting them and managing them and making sure I got the right number of them in a week. It’s like scheduled sex. You can make anything become ho-hum.

But back to the walking. Even for ‘exercise’ I rarely chose walking because there was a worry about people seeing me walking. They would see the girl with the extra weight desperately pounding the pavement trying to fit into a smaller jean size. I assumed this is what would be thought of me.

Because that’s what I thought of me, once upon a time.

But I know this to be true; aside from the actual physical benefits, walking, outside, has huge benefits for me. My creativity jumps, my sense of well being grows, just by being outside moving, even if only for a little while.

One little thing to prove

I did have one ulterior motive in this daily outside walking experiment. To see if I could get past my thing with ‘daily’. I seemed to have this hangup about doing anything daily. I would spin stories to myself about how I had the inability to commit to anything daily. All my little self care habits that you’d think would have benefits so vast I would never procrastinate over top of them, I seemed to find a way to avoid more often than I wished. Half filled journals, intermittent yoga, mediocre meditation practices, none of it daily.

I wanted to see if just this once I could change that story.

So off I went, on my first daily walk. The rule for the first while was that I couldn’t walk any farther than around our double block. This, of course, kicked up all the little grubblers in my head, reminding me that I wasn’t walking fast enough or far enough to effectively shrink my ass.

I had to walk with them for awhile and assure them that it was safe to chill out, that being relaxed and actually enjoying what I’m doing usually fosters me doing more of it. My focus on these walks was breathing, seeing, soaking in sunshine, feeling crisp wind on my face, clearing and focusing my energy.

The grubblers quieted.

I quickly got to the point where I really didn’t want to miss walking outside.

Sometimes the walks were longer, or faster, or harder.  Because I felt like it.

Now that it isn’t a ‘should’ barked out in drill sergeant form, it has become a ‘want’ that I get to do everyday. Once I dropped the fear-based desperation, I could actually enjoy what walking does for me.

Proven Pleasure

So, for 90 days at least, I demonstrated to myself that I can be trusted to follow through on something that is important to me. The truth is, when doing something for the sheer pleasure of it, there is no ‘push through’ to get it done. Once all the exterior motives are removed, the joy can come back.

What does this story bring up for you? What are you doing that feels like drudgery that was once a pleasure? What are you doing out of desperation that really holds no joy for you?

What have you done today that has neither of those D-words involved?

I’m going out for a walk.

Last day. Click the pic to snag a spot with the Resolutions Not Required package.

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As I was walking home from taking the small fry to school, I was in deep thought about our tendency to notice the stuff we don’t like about ourselves.

We tend to use a big wide brush across the things we wish were different. I always…he never…why can’t I….?

Admittedly, it is a challenge for me as well, to notice in the moment when I’m actually being exactly as I’d like to be.

This, despite the fact that it’s almost always.

It’s easier to slip back in to noticing the ‘wrong’ things. What I came up with during this walk is while our brains are wired to notice these things, it’s also just much easier. Less things to count.

Think about one 24 hour period in your life. If I asked you to keep jotting down every minute when you were basically doing the very thing you wish you’d do more, you’d be showing me pages for each day.

Even if we eased up a bit and decided that jotting a few notes each hour about when and how you were doing just what you lament and wish you would do, you’d have quite a body of evidence.

Maybe notes would be just to cumbersome, given the number of instances of you being  just who you’d like to be.

Tick marks.

All day.

Try it today. Pick one of those irksome things you wish you could get a handle on and notice when you’re behaving just as you wished.

Don’t want to smoke anymore? How many minutes in the day are you already not smoking?

Wish you weren’t so hard on yourself? Are you nagging yourself right now, while reading this? Were you two minutes ago?

Crap, you weren’t ‘til I reminded you? Stop it.

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An underlying principle of what I do here is based on noticing. Getting really good at coming back from the fog of distraction and avoidance to who you really are. To some it seems scary, but that’s usually because with any unknown we tend to build up stories that make it look that way, in order to stay safe.

Today’s the last day to sign up for the Resolutions Not Requred package. Three months of getting comfortable being heard, hearing yourself, and building a practice of noticing all the good in your life is an awesome way to start out the new year.

Come on over and request a few minutes of time so we can visit and see if this would be a good time for you and a good fit for the two of us. I know it can be kind of uncomfortable, asking for a one of these complimentary visits.

“Is she going to pressure me?”

“What if I find it really isn’t right for me?”

It’s all good.  There is no pressure and it is always up to you to make that sovereign decision. The worst that will happen is you’ve visited with someone new for a while, maybe laughed a few times, or snagged a new insight that you didn’t expect.

I look forward to hearing from you.

In the interest of putting out into the world what we want to receive, how about noticing those little thoughts that run through your head about other people?

Or sometimes, they’re big glaring neon signs, judging others for how they think, act or look.

Snap judgments help us stay safe, right? It helps us size up a situation and act accordingly.

When there’s danger.

It becomes an easy habit though, placing people in black and white boxes. We don’t have to think about the whole person. Sometimes it’s a little hit of pleasure. The judgment allows you to feel a bit better about yourself for a second.

I’m not judging you for having those thoughts. I have them, too.

I no longer judge myself for having them. They are part of being human.

But they don’t need to run rampant.

Otherwise, I’d be walking around also judging myself for being so goddamned judgmental.

You see how the circle goes.

So, notice them and they quiet a little bit. And then, as usual when you’re all about the noticing, the behavior shifts.

In this instance, it changes the whole habit of judging. You start eyeballing yourself less, too. When this unconscious habit gets questioned, you can also examine the snap judgments you make about you.

It gets easier to be a little nicer.

To you.

To them.

If you’re interested in starting the new year figuring out how to judge yourself a bit less harshly, check this out.

Be well.

A quick post for this highly observed and sometimes pressurized day of the year.

I wish you each well and hope this day has found you surrounded by whatever it is that makes you smile.

I have find myself surrounded by

• brown grass and sunshine
• my children and husband
• very little hustle and bustle
• a ham which appears to be resisting the idea of being cooked.

I was able to take a relaxing walk with my guy without wearing head gear, glove, or snow boots.

In our neck of the woods, at this time of year, this is far enough out of the ordinary to be slightly disturbing, but we have met it with gratitude and wonder.

May you be filled with gratitude and wonder, ease and grace.

Not only today, but all days.

Much love and peace.

An unnoticed hair around a tiny, squishy baby’s toe.

A green rubber band around a lamb’s tail.

Sometimes it feels like there are big rubber bands around portions of my soul.

Then there are days like the last couple, where it feels like one of those bands has snapped off and there is such a feeling of freedom and release. Circulation comes back to that part.

It can happen for you, too.

Maybe the piece of you that is adept at being kind and curious with yourself and others is pinched a bit, lending harshness and judgment to your perspective.

Or a little section of your ability to take care of yourself is turning necrotic.

When you get curious about the pinched bits; just start asking the questions, those rubber bands start to lose their tension.  With enough awareness, light shining on them, they begin to become brittle.

And one day they gently snap off, and there you are, feeling easy and light in a place that you used to be shut down and slow.

What could you do today to start shedding light, just a little bit?

And I suggested that when you do that, you feel better.

What I want to talk to you about today is how you can feel better.

But change the emphasis in that sentence for me, will you?  Since I’m not rocking vlogs yet, I’ll trust you can do it with me in your head.

How can I FEEL better?

How can I feel my life while I’m living it?

We all get caught up in the busy-ness.  In every moment, we can notice when there’s something lurking behind, urging us to act one way or another.

A feeling.

Not the should’s and shouldn’ts, the mind twisting around trying to weigh all options, sort out conflicts or whatever it might be.

What’s the feeling behind it?

When your kid’s failing chemistry, and you’ve extrapolated that out to them being doomed to a lifetime of working in a job you deem unworthy, what’s the feeling behind it? Stop for a moment; before, during or after your lecture (which your kid’s trying to ignore anyway), and notice it.

I’m betting in any scenario like that it’s fear.

Was for me anyway.

Actually what’s going on in most situations, if you’re truly noticing what’s going on inside you, boil down to fear or love.

Today, I’m not even asking you to do anything differently with what you notice.  Just feel it. For real.  It’s life changing to quit being afraid to feel for real.

Although, I suspect just in the feeling-noticing, you might be pleasantly surprised to find a change in behavior-noticing.

What if that were the case for each of us?

Does our capacity to do this depend on what we do for money?

• Ring up groceries
• Fix cars
• Create great beats.
• Heal souls.
• Teach children.

It does not.

In any moment, in any activity, we can have the intention to make people feel good. This might sound a little mushy, but it’s rather simple in practice. It may be refraining from an eye roll, a smile rather than indifference, or a hug instead of hesitation.

The magic is, making this choice, you feel better too.

See what you can do.