A safe harbor where beliefs are respected and kindness prevails.

Are We There Yet?

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janetthomasI listen to daily updates from my friend who writes plays. She is waiting for producers to get back to her regarding possible interest in one of her projects. She had hoped to hear from them last week, and with each passing day that she doesn’t hear from them, she is convinced they aren’t interested in her project.

I suggested that she take a step back for a moment and consider the idea that they didn’t give her a timeframe on when she could expect to hear back from them. Moreover, it is her OWN expectation regarding their timing that is driving her crazy! Somehow, somewhere she decided that if she hasn’t heard back from them in “X” days or weeks, it means they’re not interested. And that isn’t true at all. The only facts are (1) she submitted a play for consideration, and (2) she hasn’t heard from them yet. And that’s it. Any ideas she has beyond that are of her unique creation and vast imagination until new facts arise (with a phone call to them for an update, or them reaching out to her to tell her how magnificent she is).

The concept of time is so fascinating to me. We may think of time as this finite thing that is measured by the ticks of a clock or in the beautiful lines on our faces, yet we have a personal relationship with it, and it is very malleable. Time will shift to be whatever we decide it will be. In my friend’s case, she set up an expectation regarding time that became suffocating pretty quickly. When she adjusted her timing expectations, she felt much better!

Can you believe that it is already fall? Here it is, another change of season. Where, oh where did the time go, and how did you spend it? Did you spend a lot of it feeling like a prisoner to your personal expectations for the year (like me, lol), or did you find yourself smiling and laughing through it, playing and dancing with whatever your experiences? Now that I have had an enlightened moment about the concept of time and how I personally use it, I have made a conscious decision to loosen my belt a bit when it comes to my expectations, and I feel better already.

After all, why wouldn’t I be okay with my life exactly as it is? What is it that I am expecting that will make me feel better, happier, or more relevant?

Be willing to consider that what hasn’t happened for you as of this very moment is in perfect order. When you allow life to be okay at this very moment, there is great peace in that glorious split second. I have found that for every split second that I feel good and grounded and whole just as I am, it feels like time slows down and becomes simply the experience of “now.”

For now (and every subsequent “now”), not only are you wonderful, you are as worthy and as valuable as the stars in the sky, regardless of how tightly you have drawn your belt or what has or hasn’t happened in your life. The Glorious You transcends any and all barriers, conditions and definitions. The Glorious You is immersed in the goodness of All That Is while you navigate the fertile and creative waters of human existence. And, the Glorious You is timeless.

Right now, and in this season, LAUGH. Right now, and in this season, BREATHE. Right now, and in this season, LOVE. It’s what you do best!

And… my friend heard from a producer today. They are considering next steps. Yaay!

Reflections – Fall 2014

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_MG_2725I’ve worn glasses all my life, and last month mine needed to be sent back to the manufacturer to be repaired. At my age seeing anything close up without help is, well, nearly impossible. After all I read and write for a living. So out came an old pair (that I had to dig through boxes to find). Wearing them for a week, it turned out, provided clarity for my life, in spite of my blurry vision.

It’s no secret that I’ve experienced a series of life-changing events. With the exception of my marriage, every other part of my life has been turned upside down in these last five years. What was important to me before . . . in my career, my climbing-up-the-ladder days . . . was gone in an instant. My security, my confidence, my peace of mind were all based on my job and what it enabled me to do.

As I moved through the last few years of turmoil, I judged my now by my past. When I put those old glasses on, it became blatantly clear to me that they didn’t work very well anymore . . . and, likewise, looking at my current life through the lens of my past doesn’t either.

What I thought or did before may have brought me to this point, but it is what I choose to see right now that enables me to be happy, now. And now is all that matters.   Because now is when I can make a difference.

The Life Cycle Of A Baby Boomer

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I was born in the Fall of 1946, which makes me one of the first souls to incarnate after World War II. Every generation has a unique place in history, but I believe there has never been a single generation that has experienced as much change as we have, and I LOVE how we have handled it!

If we look back at the average life expectancy just one hundred years ago, it was 52 years for men and 56.8 years for women. Today, it is 76.2 years for men and 81.1 for women! So even if change were happening at the same pace it was a century ago, we would have even more change to adapt to because we are living so much longer. But, of course, the pace of change is nowhere close to what it was in the last couple of centuries.

According to an article published by “Industry Tap,” the total amount of knowable information is “doubling every 12 months, soon to be every 12 hours! … Buckminster Fuller created the ‘Knowledge Doubling Curve;’ he noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years.”

Does that scare you!

It shouldn’t because we baby boomers have had a big advantage in coping with this change. For the majority of us, our childhoods were protected from war, hunger and disease in our homeland. We were given television, bicycles, comic books, ice cream, swimming pools and Disneyland for entertainment, along with libraries full of books, playgrounds that were safe and schools where we could go as far as we wanted because college was affordable. For most of us, mom was there in the kitchen cooking dinner when we came home from school. Bottom line … we were able to grow up with optimism.

In our 20s, most of us got practical and started careers. We were able to purchase our own homes and cars, take fun vacations and work reasonable hours with reasonable security, especially if you worked for a large company. We had families, and they too, for the most part, got to live the good life … although for them most moms went off to work during the day, for we were now ushering in the women’s rights revolution. Women wanted careers too, being optimistic that they could do it all, and that they had the right to express themselves in leadership positions at work while remaining “mom” at home.

Things started to get stressful because it was hard for families to really do that, and even harder for men and women to make the adjustments in their relationships. And then came the technical/information age revolution … right in the middle of our careers! But our optimistic attitudes born out of our comfortable childhoods carried us through. We were confident we could learn these new things, and we were excited about participating in this knowledge frontier.

Unfortunately, at the end of our careers, a lot of the security we experienced most of our lives started to shatter with the recession. Times truly have been stressful, especially now that we are really part of the global community, and every day we see the horrors around the world.

We long for the “good old days” of our childhoods.

The good news is that in most of us that optimism has survived and is thriving and can hopefully help generations to follow to learn about the importance of attitude. “Your attitude is your latitude,” a Canadian in his 20s named Rob said to me … and I have lived by that ever since. And we have learned tools to cope with stress, such as meditation and yoga.

For the generations born in the 70s, listen to our positive experiences. For the generations born in the 90s, learn to adapt without fear. You are the ones we are counting on to carry us through this world-changing at lightning speed … especially because we are going to live to be really really old, we need you to stay positive! Learn from our optimism. It was the gift given to our generation, and teaching it is our opportunity to help you cope with a world we cannot even imagine.

So boomers, I ask that you be grateful for the blessed lives we were given and find ways to help guide the younger ones … with optimism. It is truly the greatest gift you have to share. We all have the opportunity to interact with generations other than our own, so how can we make the most of those interactions?

For baby boomers, share the stories of our youth when we believed anything was possible. We shot for the moon … and landed on it! We had to believe that was possible to make it happen, and we did. We actually gave birth to the computer generation that has shifted the world. We explored space, the deep oceans and the human personality without fear. So when you see a younger person doubting what they can do, remind them that television didn’t even exist when we were born! We looked forward to all the technological advances as wondrous events in our amazing lives.

For younger generations, hold onto your vision of a better world and what you can do to make it happen. When you hear “That’s impossible,” be polite but walk away. In our youth, we had NO idea what we would accomplish in our lifetimes. The same is true for you, but even more so. Follow your passion and “knowingness” about what can be done. Our generation helped make the shift up from the industrial revolution to the information age … that is the gift of our time. We can’t WAIT to see what you shift us up to!

And remember, “Your attitude is your latitude!”

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