Feeling Upgraded

Ever remember back when when your computer was about to make updates and it felt like an eternity and an impatient feeling about how long it was going to take to essentially “reboot” and sift through the “updates” that the computer, (using as an analogy for the body) needed to make sure it could run as best as possible and function for that day. Our bodies in some ways are like computers. They are filled with so many compartments and crevices that we need to take special care of or we’ll see various nagging signs or “clues” that turn our attention or distract us from our daily living. The reason I mention this is that along the path of our journeys, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, we all have various ways we “participate”, ignore, or give love or attention to areas of our life that need our focus and attention. What we resist grows. And stress, I’m talking “hamster wheel” stress manifests in a form that can set off alarms and signals in our body that we often don’t even know are going off when we are in that “day to day'“ mode, often just re-starting the computer, hoping it will function better. Loading up those updates and not really taking a conscious effort of things that need to be cleared. Areas of our life that need to be purged, sifted, dealt with and expressed in a new way. We need to do this to find our UPGRADE. So here we are in mid-September and I’ve taken several months here to work through the “updates” of my physical body, my “emotional” pockets and the general closet cleaning that we all can do. When I looked at my life pre-covid, many of the rooms of my home were filled with some chaos, the general feeling I had in the kitchen and our quasi-playroom / living room was infused with clothes, toys, papers stacked up and odds and ends that energetically filled the room with distress. Pre-covid, I was leaving the house at 6:50 a.m. in the morning with a 10-month year old and almost 4 year old grasping for the words to say quite literally, “this a’int working for me Mom” and yet the many flowing tears from them and myself were difficult and we hadn’t found a way to operationally “figure that one out”, I knew it wasn’t working and the alarms had been going off for several months but financially, we needed to keep our jobs and try to work through this period the best we could. I could see very clearly that the answer would be to find a role with a better schedule. Not leave at 7 am. Work remotely and have more time in my day to buffer the morning. But this also wasn’t going to happen overnight. I actually also needed to deal with how I was operating day to day. Start to work through what I wanted to create. How I wanted to feel. How I wanted the day to flow. And then start to peel down the onion to attract people, jobs, and employers that fit into this picture. I didn’t have a plan for how that was going to happen, but I knew deep down that was going to be the ticket for this phase of our young family’s life. Deep down, I wanted to THRIVE, not just survive. I actually see so many young parents in survival mode and so many with cobbling together things and not really in a thrive mindset. Well, the time has arrived to change. To live the life we were called to live. To find our joys. Our passions and what motivates us.

And after Friday March 13th, my entire life and existence changed forever when the whole world went remote. From that Friday on, I welcomed a sincere commitment to myself and my family to use the coming months to reflect, pause and create a new story. Clear the path. Make updates to my computer, my happiness, my life. Make space for creativity. Make space for how I want to live my daily life. Connect with others. Connect with myself, Nurture my goals and my values. I can honestly say that I’m so proud of my upgrade, Christine 2.0 so to speak. I’ve tapped into my creative side with writing. I’ve purged and cleared out the old chaos and energies in my home. I’ve authentically and courageously connected to my own voice and leaned into the passions and areas of the job market that resonate with me at this time. I have committed myself to a daily mindset practice and packaged my own journey as a way to support and continue my growth in a positive way. If there’s anything that I’ve learned from this process, it’s been that you are not your circumstances. You are so much more. And, as Marie Forleo puts it so nicely, “Everything is figureoutable.”