Blog

Where I'll share thoughts and anecdotes about living your best life, while I live mine!

I’m Not Sure. But, It’s Okay

July 26, 2020 By Pat Williams

Sometimes you just have to trust that things will all work out. The path is not always clear when we choose to take steps in a new direction.

The new podcast series, I’m Not Sure, But It’s Okay focuses on stories of resilience and self-awareness through uncertain times. And these are uncertain times!

Host LaToniya (Toni) Jones is the host of the series and I am honored to be her inaugural guest!

I’m looking forward to hearing the following 99 stories she plans to share over the next few months.

You can catch up with Toni and her series on her website, instagram, or the podcast home page.

Is It Time to Rebuild?

August 14, 2019 By Pat Williams

Tower Point at Hovenweep National Monument

There’s no question we are, in part, a product of our environments. For some of us, life lessons take longer, and getting ahead can be more challenging because we started life 50 paces back from a healthy starting line.

Babies who are not held and loved regularly in their infancy are more at risk for behavioral, social, and emotional issues as they grow up.

Some of us were born to parents who had emotional issues. Perhaps they held onto us too tightly by being controlling, or tried to repress our growth because they were competitive, they may even have physically and emotionally abused us.

We may not have had the opportunities that others take for granted: a warm bed, a happy home, or the financial means to be comfortable. A child worrying about whether s/he will be able to eat breakfast is a child that is unable to focus on studies and their own internal and external growth.

How do those things affect us?

It affects us in a myriad of ways. We may have difficulty sharing our feelings. We may lack the ability to judge the trustworthiness of others; we could be putting ourselves into the same broken situations, over and over again. Hoping THIS time will be different. We may have grown up with a pauper’s mindset. We may not even realize what is holding us back from what we want.

Some of us have done some internal work to create a better version of ourselves. We’ve built our own lives from the ground up. We didn’t start with a solid foundation, and although we’ve grown, maybe even blossomed, we still have unseen cracks here and there that can interfere with achieving our true potential. These things make our foundation shaky.

All is not lost, we CAN rebuild!

Sometimes all it takes is looking at something you know to be true from a different angle. The new outlook, or mindset, fills your cracks with sand and strengthens your fortitude.

You may need someone impartial to believe in you, to see who you are now, not who you were before. To cheer you on and to motivate you during the next phase of your journey. You know you are destined for bigger things!

Let’s spend some time analyzing your structure; let’s find what’s stopping you from achieving everything you want. All that’s required is an open mind and the desire to become a better version of yourself.

Is it time to rebuild your foundation? (Hovenweep) — Hovenweep Castle

An Exercise in Childhood Dreams

August 5, 2019 By Pat Williams

Think back to your younger years… what did you want to be when you grew up? What did you think you would accomplish?

Wasn’t it wonderful to choose what you thought would make you happy without any consideration of income potential or responsibility? Do you reminisce about those years with a little whimsy of what might have been? Does your heart still skip a beat when you are reminded of your original career choice?

Our younger selves are a lot smarter than we give them credit for! In 2016, Trade-schools.net surveyed over 2000 people to determine whether there is a connection between childhood aspirations and adult career choices.

Interestingly, only 21.94% of respondents were working in the childhood dream job. Of that, 21.94%, 88.14% were happy in their career as compared to 69.9% who were not in their childhood career choice and were still happy with their jobs.

I thought I’d have seen at least half of the world by now. I wanted to be a writer/reporter traveling to distant lands. I also thought I’d have a lot more playtime. I’m not a writer reporting on a war-torn country, nor have I seen the distant parts of the world I planned to, but I did recreate my life to include writing and travel.

If you find yourself waxing poetically about what you have missed in your life, it’s because that long-lost dreamer is still inside you! Spend some time nurturing yourself to evaluate those long forgotten and sorely missed dreams. What is the common thread?

Although my grown-up life doesn’t look exactly like mini-me thought it would, I am now living those childlike dreams reimagined as an adult. It’s brought new joie-de-vivre to my life that was sorely lacking before. The common thread is found in the creativity of the written word and the excitement of exploration. Even though I’m not doing what I thought I wanted, I have found a sense of excitement, play, and joy in every day as a result of blending the child and adult aspirations. I didn’t focus on these changes solely within my work life; I developed a completely different lifestyle! My playtime includes regularly hiking in new locations to feed my desire for adventure and exploration. All aspects of my work life tap into creativity with human and technical exploration.

If you feel like you missed out on your chance to become a pro-athlete or a ballerina, you may not have missed your window. Put a couple of hours aside and try this exercise:

Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Or use your iPad, phone, or computer.
Place your chosen childhood career at the top of the page.
Write down as many skills as you can, required in that particular career choice.
Cross out the ones you are positive you are incapable of performing at this stage of your life. Rejected skills can be because of physical limitations or choice. For example, you may love football, but you don’t want to be knocked down anymore.
Place a question mark beside the skills you might not be great at now, but you could improve with practice or training.
The remaining skills are ones you currently possess or can learn.
Then take a long look at the list that’s left. Ask yourself:
- How can you work those items into your life?
- Do the remaining things on your list accentuate skills that you have already developed?
- Can you combine abilities to create something entirely new that you hadn’t considered before?

You may have missed your professional draft years, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be involved in football now. Or you might not be lithe enough to perform Swan Lake with the Royal Ballet, but you can still incorporate dance into your life. Take a moment, review your abilities, and find the common thread. Have you considered a weekend team playing touch football in your age group? Perhaps dance lessons at a salsa club are precisely what you need to soothe your inner 6-year-old.

A little introspection, thoughtful evaluation, and a dash of creativity could quickly change your life from dull monotony to childlike exuberance!

I’d love to know if this exercise helped you! Message me and let me know!

Even at 4 years old I knew I was NOT destined to be a ballerina!

Dirt Roads

May 20, 2019 By Pat Williams

Of all the paths you take in life, be sure a few of them are dirt.

Mother Earth. Somewhere along with human existence, we’ve tried to move away from her. We build houses for comfort and pave our roads for a smooth ride.

What has resulted is us stressing from sunup to sundown to pay for the homes we built for “comfort” while we drive past the beauty of the world, back and forth, back and forth. A daily ritual. No longer seeing anything except our next responsibility. Joy has become fleeting, saved for weekends or annual vacations.

The same is true of ourselves. We put on our makeup and our invisible armor, to show the world what we want them to see. How we want them to see us. We’re careful who we “let in” to see the real us. Meanwhile, we pass others in our day-to-day lives, not really seeing them and they not really knowing us.

And we wonder why divorce rates are high, or why it’s so hard to find good, loyal friends.

If you are experiencing this, take a look at yourself. Have you let people see the “real” you? Or do you only let them see what you think will make you more likable?

How do you expect to find your people, or your soulmate, if you don’t share who you are? (For the record, we’re not talking about sharing deep, dark secrets with those who have not earned the right to know them.)

A dirt road forces us to slow down and become aware of our environment. To see the beauty surrounding us. To revel in it. To laugh while being bounced around by smaller rocks and steer around the larger ones.

The secret to “being a dirt road” is in knowing yourself and being proud of your capabilities and what you bring to the world. Love yourself for who and what you are and the world will follow your lead.