Word-Of-the-Week #990: Change
July 27, 2023 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #990: Change
Change – the action of making something different.
Do you find change difficult or stressful? Or do you love the excitement of creating or experiencing something new?
One of my all-time favorite quotes is, “Change is inevitable, growth is optional.” Change is a part of life. Four times a year the seasons change. We experience physical changes every day. Some people find change almost paralyzing while others find it exhilarating.
This week features two of my subscribers who shared stories about change after reading my 19th anniversary WOW about being lucky and good karma. And a great follow up to last week’s Diversity!
Jennifer wrote, “I have received your Wow Word of the Week emails since I attended the Woman’s Foodservice Forum (WFF) about 19 years ago. I remember hearing you speak and was so inspired. I was about 31, a mother of a 2-year-old and going through a separation/divorce while growing my career. I am still with the same company (now in a Director position) and your weekly emails have helped keep me going all these years. Thanks so much for the years of inspiration!”
Kim wrote, “I adopted a dog from Puerto Rico that had social anxiety. She was scared of everything especially if I got mad say from dropping something. She would be so scared she wouldn’t go into that room for weeks. So, I learned quickly to let everything go and act like it was supposed to happen and that I was happy it happened!
When I dropped a Tupperware dish full of spaghetti on the floor, she looked at me and I exclaimed, oh good! Yay! So glad that happened, this is so much fun cleaning this up!! And it worked! She would wag her tail instead of cowering away!
That behavior made me change my own karma. Now things that get messed up don’t bother me, and life is so much better! Saying whoopsie! and moving on, cleaning up, and laughing has been the best thing. Incidents aren’t so heavy and energy draining like before, and I am a much lighter happier person because of my dog, Voodoo. Cheers! “
And this from Steve Strauss, “Does change have to be hard or can you let it be easy?
Have you found that changing alone is better for you? If not, who can assist you with your change?
Coaching Point: One year from now is probably going to happen anyway. Do you want your life then to look just like it does now? Or do you want it to change?”
This week’s focus is all about change. Change is inevitable, growth is optional. That pretty sums up life wouldn’t you say? How would it feel to embrace change knowing that YOU CAN AND WILL get through it? And how about the added bonus of improving your karma too?
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Word-Of-the-Week #989: Adversity
July 20, 2023 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #989: Adversity
Adversity – an unfortunate event or incident.
How well do you deal with unfortunate events? Do challenges or disappointments make you want to give up?
This week features Christine Schoenwald’s article on Heartbreak from YourTango.com, “She Tells Her Grandma She’s Been Cheated On — And Grandma Gives Incredible Advice.”
“There are times in life when you just want to curl up in the fetal position and cry.
You feel broken like you don’t have the strength or the desire to go on. Maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on you, or you’ve been fired from a job. Everything sucks so badly that you don’t see how things could ever get better.
This simple story can help. It illustrates the best way to handle adversity and how we can take those challenges, disappointments, and overall bad things that happen to us, and use them to create better versions of ourselves.
A young woman was visiting her grandmother one day and telling her how difficult her life was. She had discovered that her husband had cheated on her.
“Gran, I give up. I’m just not strong enough to fight anymore. Everything seems to be going wrong and when one problem is resolved, another one ten times worse happens. I swear I’m done.”
Her grandmother looked at her, dried her tears, and brought her into the kitchen. There, the grandmother filled three pots with water and put them on the stove. When the pots started to boil, she placed carrots in the first pot, eggs in the second, and ground coffee beans in the third.
The young woman and her grandmother didn’t say anything and just watched them boil. After about twenty minutes, the grandmother turned off the heat from under all the pots and brought the contents of each out, and put them in bowls.
“Tell me what you see,” the grandmother asked.
“Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” the granddaughter replied thinking her grandmother’s mind wasn’t as sharp as it used to be.
“Feel the carrots,” the grandmother told her granddaughter. “Then take an egg and break it. Lastly, take a sip of the coffee.”
The granddaughter did as she was told and then asked, “What are you trying to tell me?”
“You see, honey, each of these objects faced the same adversity and each reacted differently.
The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the scalding water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile with only a thin shell protecting its liquid interior, but after sitting in boiling water, its inside had become hardened. The ground coffee beans were different than the other two — instead of being changed by the water, they had changed it.”
The granddaughter nodded her head in agreement and wished the science experiments in seventh grade had been as instructional.
“Which one are you?” The grandmother asked her granddaughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you react? Are you a carrot that seems strong but with pain and adversity; do you become soft and lose your strength; or are you the egg that starts out with an adaptable heart but changes with the heat?
Do you have a fluid spirit usually, unless something bad happens like a death, a breakup, or job loss, and then you become hardened and inflexible? Do you look the same on the outside, but inside do you become bitter and tough?”
The granddaughter was listening and trying to make sense of every word her grandmother said.
“Are you like the ground coffee beans that actually changed the hot water, the very circumstance that brought the pain? When the water gets hot it releases the wonderful coffee smell and takes on the flavor of the coffee. If you’re like the bean, when things are at their worst, instead of giving up, you get better and stronger and change the situation around you,” the grandmother explained.”
The young woman hugged her grandmother and with clarity went to go talk to her husband. As she was almost outside the door, her grandmother said, “Be the coffee, honey. Always try to be the coffee.”
In the end, the happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best everything, and every day isn’t found with lollipops and unicorns — it’s just that happy people make the best of whatever comes their way.
The brightest future is built on a forgotten past. It was a wise person who gave this great life advice: you can’t go forward in life until you let go of your past failure and heartaches.
Don’t let adversity knock you so low that you can’t get up again. Try to lear from it, forgive if you can, and know that trials help make you strong, sadness keeps you human and happiness helps make you sweet.”
This week is all about adversity. Are you the carrot, the egg, or the coffee? How would it feel to be able to make the best of whatever comes your way?
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Word-Of-the-Week #988: Lucky
July 13, 2023 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #988: Lucky
Lucky – to experience good fortune.
Do you consider yourself to be a lucky person? Do good things happen to you? Do you believe in Karma? What goes around comes around?
Today I am celebrating the 19th anniversary of my WOW’s, and this is the word that came up for me!
I have a great cartoon clipping that reads, “Good luck is being in the right place at the right time with enough money.” There are many more great quotes. Do you have a favorite one?
My mother told me from the time I can remember that I was lucky. And I consider myself to be a very lucky person. I always get prime parking spots. If you have ever attended one of my programs, or driven with me, you’ve probably heard about or seen my “Parking Fairy, Towanda.” She is always in my car with me! And she even appears in other cars I’m riding in. We always find a spot. 🙂
While I have been very lucky for most of my travels, I learned the hard way that tourists are targets. Their purses, their pockets, their bags, their wallets, their cameras, anything of value. The first time I flew internationally, in 1984, I learned you can never let your bags out of your sight. Somewhere between checking out of the hotel in Paris and arriving at the airport my camera bag with all my equipment and film was gone.
In 1996, in Rome, I learned never to put all valuables in one bag. While waiting in line for a taxi, I got distracted watching the birds flying in formation and almost had my carryon bag snatched out of my hand. All the airline tickets, passports, jewelry, and money were in that bag. I now split those items up and put them in multiple places.
I also never carry money or credit cards except in transit, and they never leave my possession. I assume everyone is out to rob me and I always put everything in the safe immediately upon arrival. (I have also learned the hard way to clear out the safe before checking out.)
I had never been violated in my hotel room until 2010 in Namibia. In broad daylight my purse was snatched off the bed. I was in the bathroom and the door was open. New lesson learned: never stay in rooms that are vulnerable to the street. Every place we had stayed so far was gated and walled, clearly for that reason.
When my purse was stolen, I believed I would get it back. The owner of the B&B across the street was pulling out of his driveway and took the young men who spotted the thieves into town. When I returned from my tour later that day sure enough my purse was at the front desk. The bad news was it was completely empty. The good news is I had taken my phone out to charge it.
The only thing of real value were my prescription sunglasses. I said, “It serves those little thieves right. They are of no use and worthless to them.” Then I thought, “They will pitch them in a trash can.” Our driver and guide took me downtown and we started digging through the trash cans in the six-block area where the thieves had been spotted. I kept thinking to myself, “I am a lucky person and I will find my sunglasses.” And sure enough after ten trash cans I found them. Would you have done that? (My husband Chris thought I was totally crazy thinking I could even find them.)
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” – Chinese Proverb
This week is all about your lucky stories. When was the last time you experienced good fortune? Do you get good parking spots too? Do you have good Karma?
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Word-Of-the-Week #987: Awe
July 6, 2023 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #987: Awe
Awe – an overwhelming feeling of wonder; often inspired by something majestic or powerful.
Did you take an “awe walk” last week? Were you able to just sit and soak in the fireworks and festivities on the 4th this week?
This week features the last half of NY Times writer Jancee Dunn, “An ‘awe walk’ can be found right in your own neighborhood. Looking for wonder, one step at a time, can be key to helping you restore, heal, connect.”
To Recap: Decide on a place
You can pick somewhere you’ve never been, Keltner said, adding that you’re more likely to feel awe in an environment where the sights and sounds are unfamiliar — a local park or trail you’ve never visited, a new neighborhood in your city or town, a body of water if you live near one. Or you can travel to a familiar spot and imagine that you’re seeing it for the first time, he said.
- Pay attention to your senses
Heading outside hoping to be awed can seem daunting, but try not to put too much pressure on yourself, Keltner said. Instead, he said, just be open.
Take in the sights, sounds and scents that usually escape your awareness but have the potential to raise goose bumps. When something catches your attention, “stop and pause and feel,” Keltner said.
Sense the wind on your face. Touch the petals of a flower. Tune into the sounds of what Rachel Carson, the American marine biologist and the author of “Silent Spring,” once called the “living music” of “insect orchestras.”
Keltner often gives his students an assignment: to simply notice the sky. His students examine the colors, clouds and how the vista can change in an instant. “They’re blown away,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘I haven’t looked at the sky in years.’ ”
- Start small
When you’re on your walk, get in the habit of pausing and homing in on a detail — a ripple on a lake, an ant moving industriously through the grass — then, slowly expand your field of vision. The shift in focus to vastness can sometimes inspire awe, Keltner said.
Or pan from the ground to the sky. If you’re in a city or the suburbs, he said, fix your gaze on a window or doorway, and then move it up. (Until I tried this exercise, I’d never noticed how many building rooftops in my town had statues and carvings of animals, human faces and even gargoyles.)
What Keltner calls “part to whole” focusing can apply to people, too. If you’re in a crowd, start with one person and zoom out to take in the whole system of human activity, he said. “Walk by a pickup basketball game, and you’ve got enough humanity for a Shakespearean play,” he said.
I’m an early riser, so I’ve started taking awe walks at dawn. I watch the sky change from violet to orange to fuchsia and have seen a small colony of bees wake up and start to work. I even discovered a nest of baby robins, lodged snugly in a juniper bush two blocks from my house. Now I walk there every morning and listen to their faint, reedy chirping.
Like Keltner’s strolls with his daughter to the cedar tree, seeing the nest every day sustains me, somehow. I feel a twinge that the robins will leave soon. Until I find another wondrous sight to delight me, I’ll keep walking — phone stashed, eyes and ears open.
This week focus on experiencing awe! How easy is it for you to “stop, pause, and feel” the sights, sounds and scents around you? When was the last time you watched the sunrise? I made it a point to totally change up my 4th experience this year. I spent time with friends and watched the fireworks from an entirely new place that was up close and personal. 😊 Definitely awesome for sure!
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