What Italy is Teaching Me: What Remains

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

By Esterina Anderson

A few weeks ago when we were in Chiavari, we walked the promenade there over and over. Drinks for aperitivo were advertised all over the place, and next to the usual Aperol Spritz I kept seeing something called a Hugo Spritz.

Last night I finally decided to look up what it was and make a non-alcoholic version at home. We happened to have the right ingredients, and Oh My Gosh, it was delicious –  Light, refreshing, and perfect for sitting outside on a hot summer evening!

We were out on our back balcony enjoying the drinks and the view when I noticed my glass was halfway gone. My immediate thought was that I should go inside and make another.

But I caught myself. That thought felt very familiar. For a long time, I thought this was just part of my drinking problem. But I’ve come to realize it’s bigger than alcohol. The deeper issue is scarcity.

If I love the taste of something, the moment I notice it’s running out my mind shifts. Instead of enjoying what is still there, I start thinking about how it’s going to be gone and how I can replace it. If it’s replaceable, half full becomes a signal to refill.

What’s interesting is that this didn’t disappear when I stopped drinking alcohol. I noticed the same pattern with seltzer, soda, and other NA drinks. The object changes, but the thought pattern stays the same.

As I sat there looking at my glass, I thought about the saying: glass half full or glass half empty.

I’ve always kind of thought of myself as a glass-half-empty person, though that never fully made sense. People who know me often describe me as optimistic, sunny, and positive. So why have I always identified more with half empty? I think I finally understand.

This isn’t really about optimism or pessimism. It’s about how quickly my mind shifts from enjoyment to scarcity. The moment something reaches halfway, I stop experiencing what’s still there and start focusing on what’s disappearing. And that mindset can insidiously steal joy.

Way back in 1992, someone told me something that left a deep impression on me. Her grandfather always said to think of the gas tank as empty once it hits halfway. If you fill it before it drops below half, and you’ll never risk running out. That idea embedded itself in me.

I developed this strong need to prevent depletion. Refill early. Stay ahead. Don’t run out. In many ways, that mindset has served me well. I’m organized and prepared. I rarely get caught off guard. But it doesn’t work everywhere. Especially not with life.

When it comes to personal consumption—food, drink, time, energy, even joy—constantly trying to refill or stay topped off can actually rob me of the experience itself. Instead of enjoying what’s here, I’m focused on what’s going to be gone.

Turning 50 and moving to Italy has shown me how much my thought patterns are changing. I know I retired young. And if I live to be 100, I still have half of my life left. That feels very different from thinking half is gone.

I am seeing this now a lot in the recovery community or in conversations with younger people who feel like they’ve messed everything up. They get stuck in thoughts like: I wasted so much time. I’m behind. I ruined things. That’s half-empty thinking.

But the shift happens when you start looking at what remains instead of what’s gone. You still have time. You can still change direction. You can still create something meaningful with what is ahead of you, whether you are 30, 60, or 90. Why not live the remaining years with purpose and be proud of every minute of it?

I’ve spent much of my life focused on avoiding depletion—refilling before things run low, staying ahead, making sure nothing runs out. That mindset can be useful in some areas, but it has also robbed me of presence and joy because I was hyper-focused on what was disappearing instead of appreciating what remains.

The Hugo Spritz ended up being a reminder. Half empty doesn’t always mean lacking. It can also mean there is still plenty left.

Maybe the better question isn’t what’s gone. Maybe the better question is what remains, and whether we can appreciate it before reaching for more or mourning what was lost.

So I sat there and enjoyed the remainder of this Hugo Spritz slowly, savoring it and reminding myself that I still had half left. And when I reached the end, I didn’t want more. It was just right. It was enough.

On our Clothing Donations and Ghana Beaches

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

If you don’t know about the issue of clothing waste on Ghanaian beaches, and you have a moment, stop here and look up “clothes in the ocean off Ghana.” What you’ll see is not exaggerated. It’s real, and it’s disturbing.

The clothes we give away to thrift stores or place in donation bins come from a place of good intention. And there are people who benefit from those donations. But there are not enough people in the world who need clothing at the scale we are producing and discarding it.

I’ve seen a version of this myself. Back in 2017, my husband and I traveled to Africa for a few weeks on an overland safari. Twice we passed through the town of Maun in Botswana. It was one of the only places we saw with shops and street vendors. And what were they mostly selling? Clothes. Racks and racks of them—many clearly from first-world countries like ours.

Most of us have heard about the issues in the clothing industry—sweatshops, low wages, poor conditions. I remember learning about it decades ago, and yet the problem seems to have only grown. And if I’m being honest, knowing all of that hasn’t stopped me from participating in it.

I’ve tried. I shop consignment more than I used to. I’ve made attempts at keeping a capsule wardrobe. But somehow, every few months, I still end up with an overstuffed closet and find myself purging clothes, shoes, and jewelry—keeping only what “sparks joy.”

And then I do it again.

Something as simple as needing a pair of black leggings turns into a spiral. I’ll start with the intention of buying just one pair. I type it into a search bar, and suddenly I’m scrolling through endless options—capris, patterns, odd cuts, things that aren’t quite right. Minutes turn into more minutes. Then I find a three-pack. Do I get all black? Or the one with red because it might match something I haven’t even worn yet?

Before I know it, I’ve bought more than I need.

They arrive quickly. Sometimes I don’t even try them on. Sometimes I do and don’t like them. Either way, I usually end up wearing the same simple black pair over and over until they wear out, while the rest sit untouched.

Eventually, I donate them.

Clothes that were barely worn. Clothes that didn’t “spark joy.”

And I know exactly where they might end up.

Even when I try to do better, I still fall into the same patterns. Convenience wins. Time feels limited. It’s easier to click than to spend hours digging through racks in a store. It’s easier to tell myself I’ll do better next time.

But next time looks a lot like this time.

And it’s uncomfortable to admit that I am part of something I don’t agree with.

This isn’t just about leggings. It shows up in other ways too—small purchases, quick replacements, things that don’t last. I don’t need to list them all. I know they’re there.

I don’t have a clean solution to this. I don’t suddenly shop perfectly or live without impact. But I do have awareness, and maybe that’s where it starts.

Not with perfection. Not with guilt.

Just with seeing it clearly.

Because once you see it, it’s hard to pretend you don’t.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On Laughing

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

A few days ago, I met with a group of women. The group is not large, but a little too large for intimate conversation without a small amount of facilitation. So there is a discussion topic for each time we meet that everyone is aware of ahead of time. For this meeting, the discussion topic was as follows:

What do you feel you can do better—or like better—about yourself at this age versus when you were younger?

Consequently, what do you feel you did better or liked better about yourself when you were younger versus now?

The caveat was that we couldn’t discuss our bodies.

I absolutely loved hearing what other women had to share. I personally have so many things for the first question and not many for the second. My initial response to the second question was that I miss having passion for work.

This morning, however, while I was walking my dog and thinking about how often people criticize others for smiling or laughing too much, I realized that what I really miss about being younger is laughing.

This realization began with me feeling a sense of kinship with that kind of criticism. I remember being in class on the first day of school every year and a teacher saying something quite funny that everyone chuckled at—but I laughed. Like really laughed. Ten minutes later I would remember what they said and giggle about it again. It was those times that I felt free and connected. I was engaged and listening and not worried about what other people thought of me. I was open to hearing and learning and contributing—and just being.

I used to laugh with my friends. I laughed so, so, so much. My family—particularly my brother Mario.

When I joined the military and was in Boot Camp, I used to get in trouble for laughing and often for the contagion it caused. The company commanders were quite hilarious when yelling at us or instilling advice.

“It looks like the captain’s cat puked on your belt buckle, recruit! How can you show up looking like this?”

I’d laugh. My friend Brando would catch on. Others started too. The company commander would yell more—which only became funnier. Sometimes that company commander would eventually laugh too. Other times, when they continued to scream, I’d see from the corner of my eye that their lips would turn upward and they were hiding their amusement and light heart from us.

Do I think that because we broke out laughing that it would be okay to show up with a dirty belt buckle for inspection? Of course not. The lesson wasn’t any less powerful because we laughed at it.

Years later, in my early professional career, I would sit in meetings and look around. I would often take a pulse of the audience to see how engaged they were. What I would often see—and most often on women—was a resting frown. Now we have the term “resting face.”

I saw that these individuals were mostly engaged, but their faces told a different story. They looked miserable and angry. I’d take note that my lips probably were resting in the same way and would actually change my expression into a more open, neutral position on purpose. I didn’t want to look miserable because I didn’t actually feel miserable.

When I facilitated meetings and saw this expression on participants, I would throw humor into the mix just so that face would soften. When someone in the room made a funny comment, I’d laugh to acknowledge that I not only heard them, but appreciated the comic relief. What I found was that when people were smiling and felt seen, they were more engaged and open to hearing others.

As I’m pushing 50, I don’t laugh nearly as much as I used to. But I notice I still laugh more than most people and try to smile, engage, and add comic relief when interacting with others. It’s a habit I don’t even think about now.

So what is so wrong with smiling and laughing?

When you smile, people often smile back. No matter how serious the conversation is, having a sense of openness is always appropriate, and smiling often indicates openness. It sends out a sense of friendliness and willingness to let others in. It doesn’t mean that the person smiling doesn’t have opinions or important things to say.

Smiling and laughing does not equal being stupid.

It took a few days, but the question in my women’s group about what I liked about myself when I was younger versus now came back to me.

I laughed.

I laughed, and it felt good.

And it actually made others feel good too.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On Why I Clean Everyday

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

First – why do you care? Haha, but really… if you care at all, why do you? How does it affect you?

When I was 22 years old, I moved to Cape Cod. I was entering the Active USCG Reserves while transitioning from a military member to a military spouse. My new home was located on a military base. It was not my first home as an adult, but it was the first home I set up alone.

This period was a transitional time in my life. Before then, I went straight from high school into the military. I was married just over a year later and unexpectedly pregnant 6 months after that. My life was busy, and I had not truly actively planned anything until that point.

As I looked around at all the boxes and pictures to hang, the disorder around me was affecting my mind. Or was it the disorder in my mind affecting my outer world?

I quickly went to work setting up home. While I opened boxes and organized the outward disarray, the disorder in my mind started to unravel into digestible thoughts. How do I gather all the college credits I accumulated into applying for a degree? Do I quit smoking? Have another baby? What do I want to be when I grow up?

As I unpacked and moved items—and then moved them again into better places—I made notes: call the education office, look into the local college, schedule that physical, reach out to neighbors, ask about pediatricians, talk to my spouse about a new baby while this little guy was still young so he had a playmate.

The act of outwardly organizing was helpful. I was making progress on something important, but also the monotony—combined with the active thinking of where we would most easily grab a plate—was just enough active and inactive brain power to keep my mind focused on the next phase of my life.

When the house was all set up and arranged just so, I missed the act of taking care of it. So I cleaned it really well. Again, the repetition and combination of active and inactive thought helped organize my inner thoughts, as they were all I had while doing this type of work.

I learned then that I very much enjoyed cleaning. All these years later I would label what I was doing as a sort of meditation, but at the time it only felt like cleaning.

I started to clean every day in various ways. There was everyday picking up—dishes, laundry, diapers, trash, wiping the table—but also things that needed to happen often but not daily: washing floors, laundering sheets, cleaning the bathroom. I put the non-daily essentials into a schedule for myself the way I learned in my years of cooking and meal planning, basically transferring my work skills to my home.

Then I moved these things outside—fix the fence, mow the lawn, ask about the grass seeds that are supposedly free.

I met my neighbors. They were all lovely. The one who was the friendliest lived across the street and worked on the base as a cleaner for the military houses in between family transitions. I don’t remember her name, but I will call her Melanie.

I asked Melanie what she did when she cleaned these empty houses, and she told me all about the floors and the blinds and the walls and corners—all the checkboxes she had to complete. Surprisingly, her house was quite a mess and she didn’t really enjoy cleaning. But she did comment that she saw me cleaning often.

What?

Saw me cleaning? How?

“Through your window,” Melanie replied.

Now I was embarrassed—but intrigued by what she told me. I hadn’t thought about cleaning blinds or paying attention to ceiling or floor corners.

A day or two later, I decided to tackle the blinds. As I was doing so, Melanie waved to me from inside her home across the street. I was slightly embarrassed yet again, but continued to clean the blinds as if it were a normal everyday occurrence.

The next time I saw Melanie, she commented on my cleaning again. That became the standard. It embarrassed me, so I often waited until I didn’t see her mini-van in the carport to clean anywhere near my own windows or outside.

Nonetheless, from there I continued a lifelong habit of cleaning nearly daily and scheduling various cleaning tasks throughout the week.

Through the years I’ve had to explain and defend my cleaning to partners, neighbors, kids, step-kids, and friends who comment—sometimes with annoyance—that my house is clean. I was always trying to hide it, clarify where I saw dirt or oils, negotiate with the kids to just vacuum that room—yes, on this setting. It was exhausting. I loved to clean when no one was home so I didn’t have to explain it.

Which brings me to the point of this blog.

Why did anyone care that I was cleaning in the first place?

I didn’t really ask for help. The kids’ chores—table setting, dishwashing, cleaning their own bathrooms, and scooping the cat litter of the cats they wanted—were not the demands of some Nazi clean-loving freak.

The cleanliness of other people’s homes doesn’t affect how much I enjoy visiting them or their company in any way. I’m not judging those who don’t like to clean. I know I’m unusual in this particular way.

So why does anyone really care what other people do? How they take care of their home, how often they cut their lawn, their hair, their fingernails? How deep into my life do you care about what I do—and why does my lawn count but my fingernails not so much?

At what point does what I do truly affect anyone else? Or does what I am doing make others reflect on what they are doing—and is that really my problem?

I did hide my real self for a long time worrying about what other people thought. That was not healthy.

This question grows from me into a larger scale. Why does anyone care who anyone loves or how they use their body to please a lover? How do the spices someone uses in their cooking matter to you? Why does it matter how other cultures cook, pray, love, dress, and take care of one another?

Yes, there are things that affect other people, but not as many as we think. Maybe the one house on the block with the overgrown lawn can bring down property value. There are things you can influence—like talking to that homeowner and maybe even offering to cut their lawn because they are a single parent short on time—but perhaps also accept how things are if that person doesn’t respond the way you’d like.

You cannot control other people. And just because you don’t like something they do—or don’t do—doesn’t make them wrong or crazy. Why waste mental energy on something you cannot control?

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m just offering the suggestion to ask yourself why you might care and whether that energy is worth it. There is a locus of what you can control, what you can influence, and what you have no control over.

A diagram illustrating the Circle of Control, featuring three concentric circles labeled 'things I can control,' 'things I can influence,' and 'things I cannot control.' The innermost circle highlights personal thoughts, actions, and decisions, while the outer circles include factors like other people's actions and external elements such as the economy, traffic, and weather.

I clean all the time. I like it. It clears my mind. For me, the house doesn’t need to be very dirty to clean it—most people shower daily even when they aren’t that dirty. It is something in this crazy world that I feel I have control over.

I like the way I feel after moving around and taking care of the animate and inanimate objects that I own—my bed, plants, and pets. I like the way my surroundings look.

The question I asked myself when I was 22—whether the disorder of my environment affects my mind or if it is the other way around—is irrelevant to me today. Both matter. And this is one of my ways to care for both.

But why do I need to explain that?

You have control over your thoughts about why this, or anything, matters. Are you wasting your energy on something you want to waste it on? Do you have control over it? Influence? Neither?

I’m going to clean whether anyone likes it or not. I hope you collect your gnomes or pink socks or do whatever it is that you like—as long as no one is getting hurt. Don’t worry if I like it. I love you for being you and doing what you love.

Make sure you are doing no harm—and then do what you love without shame, question, or worry.

Be the change you want to see. Be what you wish the world to be.

It’s all you can do.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On The Story We Think We Hear

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

There is a story has come up for me in various ways over the past few weeks. I’ve been referencing it in thought and in conversations. It feels rich with many lessons, but the one that has stayed with me most is clarity in communication.

The story, in short, is about a well-meaning teacher who sends his colleagues a message about handling negative emotions—comparing them to storms that come and go, and suggesting mindfulness as a way to navigate them. The message was intended as helpful. However, the other teachers interpreted it as criticism. They became offended, reacted emotionally, and completely missed the original intention of the message.

That alone was enough to stop me in my tracks.

This week alone there were at least five occasions at work and three at home where I was listening intently to another person and either during the communication or shortly thereafter realized there was more than one way to interpret what was being said. Yesterday I interrupted an ongoing written chat to suggest that it’s difficult to get what is inside one person’s head into another’s and asked if we could verbally communicate instead.

Since reading and discussing this story, I’ve been picking up the phone and turning on my camera far more often than before to make sure I am actually on the same page as the other person.

This reading also opened my eyes to how often there is a disconnect between what is said and what is understood. I just hadn’t noticed it before. It becomes even more apparent when communication is in writing.

Something else struck me when discussing this story with others. A member of my writing group pointed out the phrase “well-meaning teacher.” A simple question was asked: would the story have been interpreted differently had those words not been there?

My answer is yes—absolutely.

It made me realize how much intention matters, but also how invisible it is. As a third-party observer (the reader), we can see the teacher’s intent clearly. But when we are inside the situation ourselves, we often cannot. We fill in the blanks with our own assumptions.

I would like to say that in the past I always considered multiple perspectives and intentions neutrally, but that wouldn’t be honest.

I know I often tried. I know sometimes I put myself in another person’s shoes. And occasionally I imagined both sides of an argument. But in everyday communication, I assumed I understood—and that I was being understood.

Something about this story flipped that assumption for me.

Recently, I’ve been approaching communication with the opposite mindset: that I probably don’t fully understand, and I’m probably not being fully understood.

So what does this mean?

It means we need to pay more attention—not just to what we are saying, but to how we are listening.

At this point, I can imagine someone saying:

“That sounds complicated. I don’t have time or patience to think about everything I say or how it might be interpreted.”

And honestly, I can’t completely disagree. What I’m describing does take more effort and more time than I used to give it.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize how necessary—and worthwhile—that effort is. It’s an investment in saving time, building trust, and fostering peace.

This next part might sound like a shift, but it’s not entirely separate.

Over the last year, I changed my political affiliation to unaffiliated. I came to realize that most people are not as far apart as it seems. The majority of people don’t want violence, suffering, or division. But we reduce complex issues to quick labels and assumptions about each other’s intentions.

Aligning and dividing becomes the easy solution.

And much of that division is based on misunderstanding.

What I am describing is a very human response. But that doesn’t make it helpful—and it certainly doesn’t foster peace.

We are not really taught how to listen with the intent to understand.

It takes effort to consider how your words might be received. It takes even more effort to sit with a point of view you don’t like, or to remain engaged when something makes you uncomfortable.

But avoiding that work—responding quickly, assuming intent, or retreating into our own perspective—only deepens the divide.

What struck me most about the story is the irony: the teacher’s message about emotions was completely lost because of emotions.

Instead of exploring the idea—that emotions come and go like weather—the focus shifted to perceived intention.

And that happens all the time.

We miss the substance of what is being said because we are reacting to how we think it was meant.

It’s a new year. I gave up on New Year’s resolutions a while ago, but I will never give up on wanting to be a better human and leaving the space I take up in the world better than I found it.

If you’re looking for something to work on, perhaps consider this:

The next time you find yourself in the middle of a conversation or conflict, try stepping outside of it—just for a moment—and imagine you are the reader of the story, not the character in it.

What might you see differently?

And perhaps, when you feel a storm coming on, you might even remember the original message that started all of this.

Happy New Year.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On Coming Full Circle

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

If you haven’t read The Alchemist (spoiler alert: skip to the next paragraph if you ever plan to and don’t want to know how it ends) and grasped the true meaning, it speaks to how you can travel the world, be rich, be poor, and experience everything life can possibly offer—but you will not find what you are looking for until you look right where you are. In essence, the treasure we seek is within.

Last night I came back from a 28-hour marathon trip from Westhampton Beach, NY, across the Long Island Sound via Port Jefferson to Connecticut, to Branford/Rhode Island/Branford/Rhode Island, and back across the Sound on the east end of Long Island via Orient Point to drive back to where I started from. I went in a large circle.

While having a quick takeout dinner I grabbed earlier in the day on the Cross Sound Ferry yesterday evening, I suddenly felt the urge to MOVE. I had been in the car or in a tight, cramped space for more than a day and felt like I had to break free.

But there was almost nowhere to go…

So I walked. And walked. And walked.

I walked around and around in circles on the ferry. The wind was warm—breezier in some parts than others. I breathed it all in deeply. The sun was setting.

I passed the same people many times. People mostly doing the same things—on their phones, with a handful engaged with one another. I walked past them over and over in my own reverie as the ship moved forward from one destination to the next.

Something about this felt symbolic. Many remain in one spot, or like I was doing, going around and around in circles as we are carried ahead by life via a man-made creation known as time.

Once the ferry arrived and I began the drive from the east end, it all felt so very familiar—the dark, the long winding roads, infrequently passing other cars as I skirted my eyes toward the right where the white line meets the edge of the road, as I was taught in Defensive Driving when I was 16.

I felt like I was that age again. Driving familiar roads. Some of the same roads I had driven then. The landscape of the road, the lining of the trees against the night sky, the warm summer air, the cicadas, and the crickets. All my senses were highly engaged. I was so present and aware of the moment—and the connection to the past.

The radio was on and connected to my iPhone. I was listening to Angels and Airwaves. I looked at the name of the album’s words that lit up on my car’s navigation display:

Stomping the Phantom Brake Pedal

I had only just noticed what those words mean.

Has my life just gone on until now while I went in circles?

I spent my entire adulthood on a path away from where I grew up.

The first 16 years or so were quite lovely. I put trauma behind and made a life for myself—one that I was proud of. But a divorce, and what should have been a happier ending, threw me into a tailspin. I was suddenly looking for something. And to make what could be a very long story short, I unearthed trauma that was still lingering, and the last 13 years have been about discovery and healing.

But I stayed away from home.

My current husband grew up a mere 7 miles, as the crow flies, from the place I attempted to escape and was driving toward last night. I’ve visited his hometown for years while skirting around my own. I never really went back—mentally or physically.

Then a few weeks ago, on a whim, I decided to stop in my own hometown on the way past it. I was alone. I had time. I suddenly wanted to see it.

To my wonder, I felt nostalgia—something I never imagined I would feel. The feeling came on quickly, without warning. It hurt because it felt unfamiliar. Yet it was very happy, and at the same time very sad. A mix of emotion that only nostalgia unearths.

A few days later I realized I could love and dislike the past equally. It’s not all or nothing.

The feeling of suddenly being open to seeing the good of the past felt so free. It was a band-aid that had been on for so long that when it came off, that part of me felt exposed and unfamiliar—yet amazing. In the same way skin under tape would feel when exposed once again to the sun. Cautious, but so warm and, dare I say, inviting.

I let that all marinate for a few weeks and carried on with this temporarily homeless existence my husband and I have been living in since our home has been under construction in June.

And here I was last night, coming back to where I started the prior day and literally close to where my adulthood journey began.

I suddenly wanted to break out—not so dissimilar to the feeling I had on the ferry earlier.

What I am looking for has always been with me, like in The Alchemist. I know this intellectually. However, it seems difficult to access most of the time.

Last night, that portal was wide open.

I wanted to be where I was—in the flow, in the perfect moment always, like the spiritual teachings of all shapes, sizes, and religions teach us. We are always where we are supposed to be.

If we let go of our imaginary steering wheel and embrace what God/Brahma/The Universe has in store for us, we will truly be able to enjoy the ride.

Maybe my purpose this morning is to write about this. To share that you can stomp on the phantom brake pedal—out of standstills or ruts you find yourself in—and break habits that stop you from being the fullest expression of yourself.

I feel it now at this very moment. I know I will forget it quite soon and carry on with my day and my life very much as I always have—but perhaps a smidgen more enlightened.

It’s all these little “smidges” of becoming more aware that lead to peace and flow. That is the only path forward.

Perhaps forward is really upward?

Perhaps we can stay where we are in that same physical place, the same rut, but use the brake to find true freedom in knowing that there is always a very special treasure within.

That treasure is inner freedom and peace.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.

On Taking the Crutch

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

My father is 72 years old, and his health is drastically failing. He was released from a two-month stint of back-to-back hospital and nursing home stays just last weekend. He is now staying with one of my brothers because he cannot be on his own. While he is home alone most of the day, he refuses any licensed home care. Why?

Most of us grew up with the important message that it is vital to be independent and to do as much as you can on your own. It’s a great message. We should learn as early in life as possible to care for ourselves—do our own laundry, prepare meals, provide for our own food, shelter, and clothing. Relying solely on anyone else for the long term is risky.

What we have interpreted is to not take the crutch if we don’t need it. Walk on your own two feet.

But when is the message taken too far? When should we take the crutch and lean on others?

Example—

Back in 2014, when we first got our dog Koji, he was an exuberant, wild little 28 lb plaything fresh off the trucks from the south. I hadn’t had a dog in over 25 years, and I could count on my hands the number of times I ever leash-walked a dog. My husband and our children had never had a dog. We put a leash on him, and I instantly realized I couldn’t control him. So I purchased a harness.

Before that harness arrived, we had an electric fence put in, and the installer/fence trainer told us we would have to take control or the dog would control us. This applied to walking, eating, crating, drives in the car—basically everything. When that harness arrived, I was embarrassed to have ordered it and put it in the back of the new space I cleared out in what was now the dog’s cabinet.

Fast forward a year—I was walking Koji one morning before work and, as usual, having trouble controlling his pulling with his now 70 lb body. A squirrel ran by, and he pulled me down forward while the leash came out of my hand, and he ran off into the woods.

This became a regular occurrence. I stopped wearing flip-flops to walk him. I had my cell phone close by in case I needed to call for help. I often had pain in my arm from being yanked, and my right hand and lower arm were perpetually red from wrapping the leash around so many times. Being pulled down and sliding on my belly a few feet was a regular occurrence that I lived with.

It took another TWO years when one hot summer morning Koji saw a squirrel and I was pulled down again that I saw the area was safe from cars, and I just let go of the leash.

At this point in my life, I was in a 30-day mental health outpatient treatment program and going to be late if he didn’t come back soon. I didn’t want to walk in with my legs and tummy scraped up. I only imagined what they might think. And that is when I realized that they would think I needed to walk that dog with a harness.

It was like the clouds parted as I lay on the ground watching Koji happily bouncing back from across the street that I remembered I still had that harness somewhere and that there was no shame in using it. I saw plenty of people with large and small dogs alike using harnesses. I didn’t think any less of them, and even if I had—who cares? They are using what they feel comfortable with to live alongside their furry companions.

Later that morning, while I shared my morning dog walk story with my group during check-in, I tied it to a tool we had learned just the previous afternoon. It was about adjusting our expectations to be able to live alongside others by accepting reasonableness versus reality.

I don’t want to digress too far down the rabbit hole, but this does tie in.

The previous afternoon, our group lesson therapist made the connection to the reasonable/reality tool while one of the younger male participants was complaining about what a poor role model his father was. Our therapist asked him if it was reasonable for him to want a father he could look up to, and the young man said yes. He was then asked—knowing the reality of how his father behaves—if it was a realistic expectation to have of his father… the answer was no.

I didn’t like that answer. I was sort of struggling with it the previous 24 hours up until I was describing my morning walk with Koji. Was it reasonable for me to want to walk a dog with just a leash and a collar around his neck? Yes, it was. Given my dog’s size and lack of professional training, was it realistic for me to do so? OH HECK NO.

I went home and took out that harness and never fell down since.

This is now a famous story I tell when teaching yoga and my students are in pigeon pose. As I lead the student to the pose, I encourage them to grab some props around them—a blanket, bolster, or block. As I walk them through the pose, I demonstrate where to use the props should they need them. Most do not touch the props. As we lower our foreheads down, I often see students struggling as they attempt to take their bodies to places their body is resisting.

A woman practicing yoga on a mat with blocks, in a seated posture, smiling peacefully.

Pigeon is a pose that is held for a while. As your body adjusts to the new position, the worried, clenching muscles loosen and the body is able to go deeper into the stretch. I tell the proverbial crutch/dog walking harness story and how there is no shame in just accepting what is reasonable to want and realistic to accept. More often than not, a few students will reach their arms around and find a prop to help support the pose.

There are many tools I have forgotten until I heard them enough and ones I scarce use from that outpatient mental health treatment and other forms of therapy I’ve participated in before and after that. But the reasonable vs. realistic one has stuck to me like a welcome new invisible and incredibly helpful limb. It has allowed me to take the proverbial crutch and adjust my expectations in the healthiest of ways.

There is a part of that initial ingrained message about doing it without help that is important and shouldn’t be forgotten either.

Example—

I had toe surgery in January and knew I would be non-weight-bearing for at least 6 weeks. I knew I would get crutches, but I know how much I dislike crutches. I knew I would have to depend on help with driving the entire time and doing almost everything, particularly that first week when my foot had to stay elevated all day.

I took the crutch. I accepted my husband’s help.

But I took it further in both directions.

I purchased a knee scooter and one-legged half crutch so I could be arms-free.

I got up off the couch and crawled to the floor to stretch when I could.

I took my third shower alone while my husband was working. I tried out the half crutch and performed every movement slowly and mindfully. I knew he was close by if I needed help, but I attempted to do it alone.

Taking the crutch doesn’t mean taking advantage or giving in. It means using what is available when it’s needed, but not using it if it’s possible to do without it.

It’s about taking only what is needed.

It means accepting what is reasonable vs. what is realistic.

It means using props in yoga until you no longer need them. Should it be one minute later when your muscles relax, two years down the line, or never… it’s all okay and the way it is.

I often tell students in pigeon that my left hip is inflamed (which it is) and demonstrate using the blanket to cushion that side.

I will often see a smile break out as I then tell the dog harness story. I see their bodies soften, visually communicating the acceptance they feel toward their body and personal abilities. I tell the story often and premise it with, “If you’ve done pigeon with me before, please bear with my story as I tell it to the ones who haven’t heard it.”

I hope, like me, that hearing the same message several times helps it to stick. I hope they take the message off the mat like I took a lesson hot off a therapy session and can apply it to other areas in life. I hope they create their own stories of taking the crutch and sharing it with others who struggle.

We all struggle. We all remember a lesson or two that has stuck. I’d love to hear what has stuck with you—as it might help me too!

Love to all. Namaste.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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On Wiggle Room

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

TThis week I attended a work conference on business fundamentals in healthcare. A slide came up about two glasses—one that is 75% full and another 100% full. At first, I thought to myself, “What the devil?”

The speaker explained how when our cup is 75% full, it looks and feels pretty full. We can take that cup and walk around fairly comfortably. The water can slosh a bit without spilling over.

A totally full glass, on the other hand, not only feels full, but requires us to walk around on high alert with caution. The odds for even the most deft among us are to have a spill or two on the way from one destination to another.

The water glass slide, it turns out, is about how full a Primary Care Provider’s panel should be. My mind instantly drew the relation to life.

A few slides later came one with our normal baseline heart rate at 60% of its capacity, and then the rate at 100% when we might be chased by a vicious bear.

Which really answers the question of why we have an upper limit and why meeting the gold standard for everything we do is unrealistic.

It is for the same reason we don’t keep our heart at max capacity. The limit is there for emergencies to keep us alive and afloat. It’s not an aim; it’s a safety measure.

So why do we routinely schedule the last possible flight home? Fill our week with an event every night? Or permeate our kids’ schedules with enriching activities every free possible minute?

At what point in history did we lose the knowledge that full to the brim is better than wiggle room, or you are a slacker?

Another analogy I love is what we called the “Jiggle Jar.”

The first time I saw this jar demonstration (at the top of the page) was when I began yoga teacher training. I’m sure I rolled my eyes with these fru-fru yogis demonstrating visuals like business people do. The jar is filled with water and mud. The premise is that when you are still, your mind is clear and we are able to see well. When you are running around or getting bumped from the outside, it stirs up the muck and clarity cannot exist.

Of course it makes sense. But it wasn’t until a few weeks into teacher training, when I felt a relaxed sense of mind on a regular basis, that I was unable to tolerate being riled up any longer.

I had been the frog that was initially put in tepid water and the temperature turned up so slowly that I didn’t realize it was nearly boiling. Vacillating my mind between tepid and boiling made the anxiety disorder I didn’t know I already had unleash to where I was non-functional.

Just like the frog, if you moved it from a near boiling state back to tepid water, that frog may have been quiet and happy while nearly boiling to death, but it would scream and fight once it was tossed back into immense heat from something comfortably warm.

While it was my home life that was out of control, without leaving my husband and kids in a lurch, the only control I had over my life at that time was leaving my job as a Strategic Planner and taking a part-time, lower GS pay level job.

It was the best decision I ever made.

It’s the wiggle room that makes the difference between life and death, tolerable and intolerable, sanity and insanity, and even a safe panel size for a patient and provider versus one that is at maximum capacity and bound to have accidents like water sloshing out of a cup. We don’t want those water droplets to be any patients or pieces of our providers’ state of mind.

In the jiggle jar analogy, we need to see that it’s not possible to bump into anything or anyone when we create space in our schedule—and totally related—our mind.

Wiggle room is what saves us. It should be as important, or dare I say even more important, as our most important regularly scheduled appointment.

Like the temperature gauge only someone on the outside can read as the frog’s heat is being turned up, our schedule may be the only gauge we have. We can’t walk around forever with a full cup. One false move or someone else with no wiggle room or a full cup will bump into us and inevitably create undesirable results.

If you are feeling the heat, turn it down and create space. No matter how important everything else seems, it will all be figuratively dead in the water when you are no longer around to keep it all going.

Choose wisely! Namaste.

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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On Non Alcoholic Beverages

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

20 months and counting. This is just my point of view and may not be suitable for all.

10/9/22

Today is 20 months without alcohol for me.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in the last 20 months, particularly about drinking.

I love to drink. Not just alcohol. Beverages. All kinds—coffee, tea, sparkling water, soda (diet ONLY), Crystal Light… and now non-alcoholic (NA) beer.

I’ve always loved the taste of beer. I think my first experience of beer was when I was around 7 or so. My family and I were coming back from a Sunday afternoon of fishing off the piers of Brooklyn, NY. We didn’t plan to stay out that long, and we had nothing to drink. I was soooo thirsty.

On the way home, we stopped for a family favorite—pizza at Spumoni Gardens. My dad stood on the pizza line with my brothers, and my mom and I were on the drink line. The beer for my father came out first. I had been complaining for hours about being thirsty. The soda was taking entirely too much time. My mom handed me the beer and said, “Just a sip.” I took the flimsy wax-coated cup off the tray and intended to take one gulp, but promptly downed the entire thing. My mom looked at me with horror.

“You liked that?” she asked.

“Yes, I was thirsty,” I replied.

The workers behind the counter handed us the sodas, and the pressure of the line moved us out to the general courtyard, where we sat with my dad and brothers.

My mom was still shocked when she said, “I need to go back on line to get the beer—Esterina drank it all.”

The rest of my family stared at me in awe, everyone asking how I could have liked the taste.

Geez, I was just thirsty, and it quenched my thirst is all. I didn’t understand the big deal.

I had also danced for 10 years—2–3 times a week for most of the school year. I would put on a pink leotard for ballet lessons and a black one for tap and jazz. I was always conscious of how that leotard fit. As I got older and started filling out more, I started to think about calories and the things I liked. I always loved soda, and when I realized that diet soda tasted almost exactly the same, I decided to never have non-diet soda again.

I may have had non-diet soda once or twice since then (I honestly can’t say), but it’s diet soda for me now. At least for the past 35 years, it has been.

As a young adult, I never chose alcohol as a beverage of choice unless it was some fruity, elaborate cocktail on a beach somewhere. Even then, I’d only have one—completely aware of the sheer number of calories the drink had.

But sometime in my early 30s, there was nothing but non-diet soda and beer as an option with pizza somewhere after helping some friends move. I was hot, hungry, and thirsty. I wouldn’t drink the soda, so I had the light beer instead—fewer calories.

And oh my gosh, was it good! Beer and pizza together was amazing. It was Miller Lite that our friends bought. So the next Friday for pizza night, I picked up a six-pack of Miller Lite. Light beer became a part of my life.

Well, fast forward a few years. I met my now husband, who introduced me to enjoying the subtleties of wine. That was a new area for me. Wine isn’t so easy to just have one when there is a whole bottle involved. The addiction took hold from there. Light beer turned into all kinds, and a little wine turned into way too much.

Now I’m 20 months from my last drink and am as happy as I’ve ever been. I don’t miss anything about it. But I do have to give a giant plug to NA beer. I love it! I love it like I love diet soda. All of my life since I switched to diet soda, I just don’t even like the taste of regular soda. It’s so sweet my teeth hurt. When it’s the only option, I’ve often taken a sip to be polite but let the cup sit full.

When I first got sober, one day after gardening I craved beer. It had long been a go-to after a very hot day or long hours of work. I remembered we had NA beer in the fridge, but I opted for the diet soda instead. It was just as refreshing.

The next day, I started telling this same story to one of the Aware Recovery companions who came to my house as part of the year-long program I admitted myself to. When I got to the part where I remembered there was NA beer in the fridge, she stopped me with some kind of urgency and almost yelled, “You didn’t have any, did you?!”

“No,” I replied—taken aback that she perceived I nearly avoided a relapse. What did I know? Was NA beer a gateway to drinking again? It seemed to be!

A few days later, I told another companion who was at the house about this treacherous near miss. This one told me that despite being in recovery, she is a bartender and has NA beer and mocktails all of the time. She treated the episode as no big deal.

I didn’t comment. I needed to mull this over. Maybe it was one of those things where there is no hard and fast rule—to each their own.

No one talked about NA drinks in AA. My husband ended up buying a few varieties to try himself, and they were always around the house. But it wasn’t until about a year ago this month that I dared try one.

At my first sip, I was convinced I had beer. I had to go to the fridge and read the can. It wasn’t one of those 0.0% ones. It did claim it was <0.5%. Again, I was scared about this little amount. I looked it up and read there is no way anyone can get drunk from that amount. You would need to drink 40 for any kind of buzz. Your body processes this tiny amount so quickly that even if you could ingest 480 oz in any short period of time, you still can’t get inebriated.

Inebriation-proof and tastes this good? It seemed as too good to be true—like the Diet Coke I still love.

I started drinking them and trying different kinds. They are so good. To me, as good as the real thing—but no buzz. No risk of slurring or not being able to drive.

Nothing came up on my very frequent urine tests with Aware, the breathalyzer, or at the addiction treatment center I went to for Vivitrol shots.

It took me weeks to even think about telling the third companion that I was drinking NA beer. She was the youngest of the group and seemed to be the most receptive to such an alternative thought. As soon as I told her, she piped up that she still goes to bars with friends and drinks soda or whatever non-alcoholic cocktail might be advertised on the menu. She has been doing that for years and never felt tempted.

Not long after, another companion was added to my dwindling number of visits (because I was nearing the end of the program), and this one had a whole list of NA cocktails up her sleeve. Additionally, she didn’t get the AA word that drinking any of these out of a wine glass was the road to ruin, so my guilt about even entertaining such a thought went out the window.

Now, I am not saying this is okay for everyone—to have NA drinks, beers, or mocktails, or to have them in traditional drinking cups. Perhaps if I didn’t take that pause when that first companion sort of scared me, it may have quickly put me somewhere bad. I’ll never know.

It’s often not possible to know when you made the right choice. Usually, you know when you made the wrong one.

But I’m still not saying it’s a great idea or alternative for everyone. It might not be. I am not an expert, and the only experience I’ve had is my own short-lived one.

Not long ago, I opened the question about yes/no to NA beverages to the local town Facebook recovery group I am in… and if one could get their proverbial head bitten off, I would have. Glad I only asked and didn’t tell them I did!! Not one person (not one) thought it a good idea.

The two biggest comments were:

1—When did we ever drink for the taste?
2—Mimicking the real thing will lead back to the real thing.

And I think that might be true for some people—but not all.

Everyone thinks they are different or immune to whatever the warning is. I took pause here and evaluated.

I’ve always had good discipline when it came to food, drinks, and calories. I do realize that drugs and alcohol are a different story and their addictive qualities make that nearly impossible to control.

But I am not having the real thing, and there is nothing addictive to it.

I’ve always been okay with knockoff food versions. My Diet Coke is an example, but there’s so much more. I switched to skim milk in high school when I had money from a job and a car to buy the milk. We only had whole milk at home. Did it taste as good? No, of course not. But it was better for me and good enough. Now I prefer it. But I don’t even drink milk anymore—only almond milk. Another switch that wasn’t as good at first but is now my preference.

Same with sugar substitutes. I never minded SnackWell’s or those fake types of sweets. I prefer making them myself. Yes, like the beer, they taste a little different—but not much. These kinds of things satisfy me without the guilt, and over time I don’t even like the original anymore. The same has been true for me all my life—from milk to tofu over meat.

So in answer to the responses to my question in the Facebook recovery page, I did drink for the taste, and never has the fake version led me back to the real thing. When I switch, I switch for good.

It’s been a full year now since I dipped my toe into NA beverages. So far, I don’t feel any closer to a road to ruin. Do I miss wine? Not really. There are zero good substitutes for it, and in the face of that reality, I am not even interested.

I haven’t really gotten very into mocktails—for the same reasons I never did before with hard cocktails or hard alcohol. The calories don’t seem worth it.

The growth of NA beer is pretty astounding. It is available everywhere. The only place I haven’t come across it is in the Bahamas. But everywhere else I have been since, it’s readily available.

What makes it even more fun is the lack of too many options. There are one to three available choices, tops. So I get to try the one or three varieties and never feel like I’m missing out on the dozen more I could have tried, like I often felt with the real wine or beer I drank too much of.

The truth is I love to drink. I like lots of drinks. I love the taste of beer, and I can have that taste without the consequences. It’s a chance I was willing to take, and knock on wood, it’s been a gift.

Not for a second in the 20 months and counting now have I felt like I was missing out on a thing. I feel great, and I love my life. I love my life without alcohol.

Yeah.

On Transformation through Thoughts – You have more power than you think!

Posted on by Esterina Anderson

I saw a Facebook post from my good friend Michele and it inspired me to write a blog. I haven’t felt inspired to write in a while. It is a quote that talks about how powerful your mind is, to mind your thoughts because your body doesn’t know the difference of what you want and what you don’t – but it will manifest what those thoughts are.

There is so much truth to this concept.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the word “woke.” Back in 2008, I don’t remember what I googled, but I fell into a rabbit hole of reading about what the end of the Mayan long calendar meant in 2012.

There were all kinds of end-of-the-world predictions. There were also some spiritual explanations that were ever so slightly hokey, but something about those explanations felt right. Have you ever heard or read something that spoke truth to you down to a cellular level, where you knew in your core there was veracity to it?

The spiritual predictions said that in 2012 there would be a mass spiritual awakening for many humans. People would start to look at the world in a different way and realize immutable truths that were otherwise hidden in plain sight before.

I closed the browser that day and enjoyed the life I built at work and at home, although there was always a little bit of a nagging feeling that something was missing.

Four years later, when 2012 arrived, I was in a new marriage with a larger family, and despite the unbelievable love I had for my new family, there were equally unnecessary struggles with the adaptation to the new situation—so much so that I was experiencing anxiety at levels that I’m sure were doing harm to my body.

And then, oddly, a series of trainings, books, and podcasts just happened to come my way. They were eye-opening, and in a few months I had radically shifted the way I saw the world. An absolutely new world opened up to me where I understood how our minds and brains work—how what I was doing and striving for was not the key to happiness.

That is what the term “woke” has meant to me, until more recently when I hear it used in the way most use it now.

True happiness does not come from things, vacations, relationships, or experiences. True happiness comes from the way we choose to see the world.

It’s that simple. It doesn’t sound possible to a scientifically minded, left-brain thinker. But when I let go and allowed myself to be turned over to the will of the universe, the answers came to me, just as many spiritual teachings suggest.

Knowing was great, but remembering and using the principles were not a habit yet formed. It’s a lot easier said than done. Ten years later, I’m at a place where I remember more than I forget. It’s hard. So how do you just change the way you see the world, and why does that make a difference in your life?

What do words and “spells” have to do with it?

A simple way to put it is that every single thing in our universe has a vibrational frequency—even thoughts.

Vibrations attract other vibrations. You can’t see or experience something in a vibration that you are not aligned with, the same way we can’t hear a dog whistle or see ultraviolet rays. Humans do not have senses that vibrate at those levels.

Also, the whole universe works in the same way life does, in that it is manifested through various mixes of the five elements.

From densest to lightest (also lower to higher in frequency), those elements are:

Earth
Water
Fire
Air
Ether

A seed goes into the dirt, and the dirt doesn’t care if it’s a watermelon seed or a carrot seed. Given the right conditions and mix of elements, that seed will grow into what it was intended to be.

The seed has potential and a code (watermelon/carrot/hydrangea). That code is the vibration or the intention—the thing with a lot of power that we cannot see. The dirt is the womb that holds and brings that seed to fruition.

The other elements play a role too—air (wind), water, and fire (sun). The way they all mix will determine if and how that seed reaches its potential. Animal and human life is created the same way.

And so it’s said is the manifestation of everything else.

Thoughts are like seeds, and our mind is the womb in which they grow. We manifest what we think, either intentionally or unintentionally. The mind doesn’t know or care if it’s a watermelon seed or a pansy seed—it just nurtures the magic code in it to life.

That is why it is so important to be mindful of your thoughts. That isn’t easy without practice. The practice of meditation is one of the most helpful ways to remember to monitor your thoughts off the mat too.

BUT—and this is a big one—all thoughts have a vibrational frequency, and even if you think you are manifesting something you want, if the intention behind it is not something you would want in your own life, you will get just what you asked for.

Huh???

Yes—your thoughts have a frequency, and they send out a magnetic energy that attracts that frequency.

Perhaps you want money. You put that thought in your mind and wait. But you don’t get it—you get the same life you’ve been living. “This crap doesn’t work,” you say. It won’t if your intentions are not clear or different from the way you live now. The intention (potential, like the code or ether in the seed) is what really matters.

What is the intention behind the desire for money? Is it to buy food and just survive? Is it to get drugs to get high? Is it to buy a big house or fancy car and ignore those who have nothing? Or is it to do good in the world? Is it a mix?

You will get what you intend.

Like the line in the Lord’s Prayer about forgiving trespasses as you forgive, the simple truth is that when you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven. It’s the intention, the frequency, the code in what you are thinking that is the driver.

When you want something that will be harmful to others, you will, in some way, be harmed. When you just want to get by, you will get that. If you want to make a difference in the world and do good, opportunities will come your way to do that. Your vibration will attract similar vibrations.

It’s not things we manifest (car, money, house); we manifest our intentions.

Whether we think them through or not—“Whose head do I need to trample to get a raise and buy the new car?” or “Who should I put down to feel better about myself?”—you will experience that which you wish.

You may get the car, but you will not be happy for long, because something equally as uncaring in the way it was obtained will happen to you, and you ultimately will not enjoy that car.

And we cannot not consider the spoken word. Words have more power than thoughts. That is why chanting is so powerful. I’ve written about mantra before and why Sanskrit (which is not a spoken language) is used. It’s so the intention of the mantra stays clear without your own individual bias on what a word means being accidentally infused into what you are asking for.

Before the universe, before the Big Bang, there was something immensely powerful all balled up and ready to explode. It had within it the intention of the entire universe—like a seed. When the bang happened and the universe began to spread out, the same law of seed, dirt, and conditions were applied to all that were in that pre-explosion dense object.

The Christian Bible uses God as the activator, but whatever higher power you believe in (it could just be the universe itself), when this power made the decision to come into being and gave the command (spoke the “word”), action followed. Whatever it is you believe in, it really is the word.

There is a very real truth to what people say about words being more powerful than the atomic bomb. Being mindful of what you say begins with being mindful of what you think.

It’s easier said than done. It takes practice to catch yourself and be sure to keep replacing your thoughts with things you want to see and experience—things that will do no harm.

Meditation is a great practice.

Before you think, “My mind can’t meditate, it doesn’t work for me,” consider this:

Just by being quiet, you will very quickly hear what is going on in your mind. As things come up, contemplate whether it’s a thought you want, a thought that does no harm, or a thought that is positive and uplifting.

I promise, a moment later, you will forget and your mind will take over with either the same old thought or something new. It’s normal. It’s the human condition—it’s not you.

Your mind will keep chattering, but try to keep interrupting it. Keep asking yourself if that’s a keeper thought or if it should be plucked out like a weed.

Five minutes of meditation a day is a good start because that practice will help you notice what repetitive strings of thoughts come up the rest of the day that will either serve or not serve you.

Keep at it. It takes very little work, but the payoff is the life you want. It’s not a miracle—you have to practice it. Only with time will it work.

That is what it means to wake up—to be aware of yourself, your thoughts, and your intentions, and not asleep at the wheel.

So be “woke” (not in the politically charged way) and change your life ☺️

Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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