Wellness

Drink Water and Mind My Business

Wellness /

There is a Trinidadian soca song called Mind My Business. The beat is catchy cause its soca but the words, “I gon’ drink water and mind my business (mind my business)” have become a mantra in the Caribbean community. Patrice Roberts, the artist, is singing about thriving. She is letting her haters know she doesn’t have the time to, or interest in, minding anybody else’s business. She is busy doing what is best for her (drinking water) and focusing on achieving her goals (mind my business). And I’m riding with her. I am drinking water and minding my business too. Drinking water and minding my business is not the same as grinding. In my opinion, grinding is not thriving. Thriving for me means having balance, pursuing goals and happiness, not one over the other. I know the side hustle mentality is popular now but I think its overrated. I like a life of purpose, and to be purposeful I need an adequate amount of rest. I do pursue goals, but I will not push myself to tiredness and exhaustion. Drinking water and minding my business has changed my view of myself, my view of others, they way I talk and think, who I spend my time with, what I spend time doing, and how I handle myself. It’s been great. At work I am focused, in my personal life I am focused, in my relationships I am focused, I am focused on being my best me 95% of the time. The other 5% of the time I am probably being shady or messy, but hey I’m human. I am also able to shake off feedback that isn’t valuable a lot easier and tune into the feedback that will help me grow. I have increased my focus, and I spend less time worrying about what other people think. Don’t get too excited, it’s not like I stopped caring about what every single other person thought of me, I’m human, of course I care. But please believe me when I tell you, my list dwindled dramatically. This blog is proof. Two years ago I wouldn’t have put myself out there like this. But drinking water and minding my business increased my courage. Maybe it was living through a pandemic, but I am at the point in my life where I believe life is short, and I am determined to make the most of every day. I like peace, and genuine joy and harmony. And I am focused on having ok more of that in my life. So I am out here drinking water and minding my business. It is very healing to wake up every day knowing that you are living the life you want. I want that kind of joy for everyone I touch.

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Thriving While Tired

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Today was a rough day. I wasn’t in the best mood. To tell the truth I was tired because I woke up in the middle of the night last night to send an email to someone because I was big mad. So I started the day off tired. I dragged myself through my workout and through my first meeting. There were bright spots in the day, but there were a few times when I almost logged off and went back to bed. And by 4 PM when I had to get on the phone to have a very expensive professional tell me what I already knew, I was on ten. In spite of all I went through today is still a win in the thriving column. Here’s why, I was tired and worked out anyway; I was infuriated and I spoke up for myself; I saw an injustice and I fought against it; and at the end of the day when I was crabby and sleepy, I took steps to replenish. I gave all my energy to the tasks of today. And when work was over, to calm myself, I went to the beach to watch the sun set. It worked. Everything at the beach moves at a soothing pace, waves roll in lazily, birds are unhurried, fish are unbothered and the humans do not rush. So my breathing slowed, the tension in my head eased, and my shoulders relaxed. Thriving isn’t always about rest and relaxation. Sometimes thriving means using my energy to make a difference. Today I used what little energy I had to fight for what I believed in. I am beyond tired. And, I am thriving.

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Learning to Thrive

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When your life has been interrupted sometimes you have to adjust to survive. Survival shouldn’t become a way of life though. But what no one talks about is making the transition from surviving to thriving. That transition can be hard if you don’t know what thriving feels like. And don’t be fooled into thinking that because you thrive in one aspect of life, it will be easy to thrive in all aspects. Sadly, that is not the case. How many times do we hear or read about folks who are on top of their game in professional aspects barely surviving in their personal lives? Or the opposite. The truth that no one told me, is that managing your life is a discreet set of skills that you need to learn. What sucks is that in most cases you’re expected to learn these lessons without direct instruction. But anyway that’s a different subject for a different day. Today we’re talking about learning how to thrive. For me I had to start with my thoughts. I had to be able to visualize what thriving would even feel and look and sound like. I mean if I can’t ‘see’ it then I don’t know what I’m aiming for. Sometimes I saw it in other people’s lives or in books or heard it described. Sometimes it was accidental or sometimes it was because I was searching. To keep it forefront in my mind, I made a vision board using a PPT slide and images I snagged from Google and saved it as the background on my computer. I spend hours on my computer each day and that vision board is always in the background reminding me of what I want for my life. Once I lock in on what thriving in a particular aspect of my life looks like, I have to map out how I will get there in my head like a project. I think about how I want that part of my life to look and feel and then I think about the specific steps I will need to take to get there. To be honest, after I make the list of steps, I don’t always know how I’m going to be able to complete each one. But I don’t get hung up on what I don’t know. I research – I talk to people, read, Google and use all my resources to find out how. And I know that this will feel a bit woo- woo to some folks but when I start moving in the direction I want to go in, I start seeing and getting the opportunities I need. It’s true! Anyway, the other important thing is that I pray. I always pray about the goals I want to accomplish. I always ask God to align my will with His will. That is important for my life. The hardest part of learning to thrive for me has been sticking with it. Cause learning not to settle is an everyday job for me. Old habits die hard so I have to deprive them of oxygen to help them on their way. And that means constantly reflecting on my decisions. I have to ask myself what I really want in a situation, emphasis on really. If I compromise I have to sure that I compromised for a good reason and not because I wasn’t pushing for what I truly wanted. The same for if I give up altogether. And on the days that I realize that I settled – it happens, I have to forgive myself and move on. No dwelling. But it takes effort, it definitely has not been an overnight process for me. I have had a few wins, and some losses. But I don’t count it that way. I count it based on the number of days I wake up feeling like I am living the life I want. And whew, as much work as monitoring my own thoughts is, I finally like my life, so it’s worth it. The journey to peace continues.

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Growing Sideways

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This tree is still growing. It has been growing like this for as long as I have lived here. I am not sure how it ended up on its side, but here it is, growing, on its side. I am not sure why nobody picked the tree up, propped it up and supported it to grow straight. But it seems like the tree was determined to survive and figured out how to do it. There are times when I look at this tree and I see a story of survival. But most times when I look at this tree, I see a lack of care and support. Maybe I am too emotional about a palm tree, that is growing in spite of. But I think it makes me mad when I think that someone could have intervened to help this tree grow upright. With a bit of effort or interest it wouldn’t be growing on its side. I used to be like this tree, growing in an unnatural way, just focused on survival. I was living with illness and accepting it as normal because I was so focused on survival. I adjusted my diet in the hopes of feeling better. It worked for a while and then I had to adjust some more, and so the cycle began. I adjusted and felt better for a period of time, then the adjustments stopped working and I had to adjust some more. None of the doctors could tell me what was wrong and so I adjusted my expectations of health and resigned myself to living with the symptoms. I wish I could say that I got sick of growing sideways and finally took action. But that’s not what happened. It took an escalation of symptoms for me to even begin conceptualizing a life without the adjustments. I had become comfortable with growing sideways and had stopped even attempting to thrive. Uggghhhhh!!!! I am so disgusted even thinking about this. But I won’t dwell on the past. The thing is, I am not alone. There are so many people moving through the world growing sideways. There is nothing wrong with trying to survive or adjusting to survive, but it is the death of a desire to thrive that I find dangerous. It led me to settle for something less than I wanted. All while subconsciously knowing I deserved more. I had just become so accustomed to being uncomfortable that it became my norm. Please don’t do this. Survival has its place, but its only a stage. It doesn’t have to become a parking space. So if you are out there and you are settling for the adjustment, give yourself the care and concern that you need to thrive. To be clear, I am still not all the way upright, I still lean a bit but I am most definitely not growing sideways. And for those who will be tempted to remind me that the tree is in a beautiful place and its still alive, all of that is true AND it is still growing unnaturally.

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After The Storm

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Hurricane Ian has passed and left it’s mark. It has wiped out entire communities, ripped trees out of the ground, shut down highways and wrecked bridges and homes. The wounds it inflicted are not only physical. There are emotional wounds that may not yet be visible. Preparing for the storm, living through the storm and returning to the uncertainty of its impact in the aftermath has been stressful for me. Some of it feels familiar and some of it feels foreign. Similar to the way it has reshaped the landscape, Hurricane Ian has reshaped me. Living through a hurricane, I learned new things about myself. I had never been required to evacuate my home prior to a storm before. I had never left my home and wondered about the extent of damage I would face when I returned. I had never faced the prospect of my entire community being wiped out before. It was stressful before, during and after. My stress before the storm was related to making sure that everything we would absolutely need or want was with us. The truth is I took most of what I needed, and some of what I wanted, but it definitely wasn’t everything. How does one even make that call under stress? It was stressful during the storm because even though I was on higher ground I was still experiencing hurricane winds and rain. And truthfully, I couldn’t will myself to stop watching coverage of the storm. So there was a constant loop of information about its path and velocity that added to my stress. I am not sure that not watching would have been better. There was also the added stress of not knowing if or when power and by extension internet connectivity would be lost. So again, binging information about how the hurricane was unfolding felt important. The stress after the storm was two fold. The first dimension was making our way back home to uncertainty. Was home still intact? Was there damage? To compound the matter, traveling home was eerie. There was no water on the roads or trees blocking our path, but there was also no one else on what is normally a very busy highway but us. No one. On the car ride, no one verbalized the angst we were feeling, yet it was palpable. I had never driven up to my home and begun inspecting it from the outside before, albeit silently and what I hoped was inconspicuously. Walking to the door, opening the door, walking through our home inspecting it – all done while sort of holding my breath. Minor water damage was all we found. We could live with that. And just when I was about to exhale and celebrate, I remembered the folks directly impacted by Ian. They were not so lucky. How should I feel? Was it alright to be happy that we were spared while others were suffering? People in our own city are still without power days later. People further to our south lost their homes, jobs, cars, places of business and more. What is the appropriate emotion to feel when you have been spared and others are suffering? I don’t have answers. I am still processing this entire experience. I know will be expected to show up and be as I was before. I am not as I was before. The hurricane has reshaped me too. I am not sure that I am aware of all of the ways it has changed me. I am not sure that I ever will. Right now I am existing in the tension of gratitude and remorse. I am still standing, but like the tree above I have been changed. I am not qualifying the change as good or bad, it just is. It exists and I am acknowledging it.

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Navigating the Journey

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So you have set some boundaries. You got the courage up and told the folks who need to know. Hopefully you have been met with understanding and folks are honoring them. It’s nice if other people honor your boundaries, but truthfully the key person that should honor your boundaries is you. But it is hard, because as we previously discussed in an earlier post it can be both enlightening and lonely. When it gets lonely we often question ourselves and are tempted to roll back the boundary. It’s only natural and we must resist the tendency to be too hard on yourself. This is a marathon and not a sprint. It’s ok to adjust a boundary or abandon one altogether as long as it is your choice, and you are making it for reasons that you shouldn’t regret. Sometimes you try a boundary and realize that it doesn’t quite fit your need. It may be too harsh or too lenient. That’s ok. Adjust and find what fits. I will say this, setting boundaries across cultural lines or generational lines will probably result in some adjustment. Its also ok to have customized boundaries for different groups of people. There are privileges that you may want to extend to groups of people that you don’t want to extend to others. That is your choice. Ultimately this journey is about your physical and mental safety and well-being. If you slip and allow a boundary to be crossed, spend some time reflecting on why you made the allowance. Was it necessary? beneficial? intentional? accidental? Another thing to reflect on is how it made you feel. Whether intentional or accidental how did it feel when you did not honor your own boundary. How much personal capital di you have to forfeit? You may be tempted to judge or beat up on yourself. Resist the urge. This is a change process and change processes aren’t always smooth. Don’t invest in shame about it whether from yourself or someone else. Instead figure out why it happened. Similarly if you find that you were persuaded or coerced to relax your boundary for someone else’s benefit, please interrogate that. Some folks are deliberately manipulative and some folks are less direct about getting their own way. If you find yourself people pleasing, you will need to uncover why you are invested in pleasing others at your own expense. I will bet that it doesn’t feel good, so be honest with yourself about why you do it. Setting and maintaining your boundaries is only your responsibility. Other people may vary but you are the one that others will look to when they are determining if they should honor your boundary. On the other hand, no prizes will be handed out for sticking to a boundary that no longer serves you. Seek balance not perfection in this process. Give yourself and others grace to adjust as necessary. Choose what is important to you for yourself even if you have to fight for it. Fight for your boundaries if you have to. Make time to reflect on what is important to you, and look for alignment between those two categories. You are worth the work it will take you and other people to get this right. You are not too much, stuck up, sedity, or high and mighty. You are a human trying to have the most fullfilling human experience that you can. Best of luck on your journey.

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Other People’s Perspectives

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Other people’s perceptions. Whew. They are ever present and are always informed by their own experiences. When a person sets a boundary they are likely to experience other people’s perceptions, perspectives, opinions. What to do with them is always the money question. If you qualify as other people, this post is for you. At some point in our lives we are all ‘other people’. There are a couple of assumptions I will make about people who set boundaries. The first is that they thought through what was important and prioritized what were must haves and what were nice to haves for both health and well-being. The second is they weighed the cost of both setting and not setting the boundary. The third is they are/were willing to pay the cost of whichever action they choose. What that means is that while we (other people) are entitled to our thoughts and feelings about someone else’s boundaries, before expressing them it’s probably helpful to understand why we have that perspective. Are you reacting to and prioritizing your own wants/needs/issues/traumas? I will give you an example. Someone I love deeply chose a boundary for themselves and I was upset by it. But when I dug deeper I realized that I was processing their boundary as a rejection of me. I was centering myself. When I figured that out I was able to honor the boundary. Once you understand your why, you need to make a decision about what you will do with that perspective. You don’t always have to share it! Weigh the cost of both sharing and not sharing and decide if it’s worth it. And by that I mean, will sharing it help the other person or just you? Sometimes it’s worth it and sometimes it’s not. If you are sharing only to make yourself feel better, interrogate that before you act. In the example above, what I ended up sharing was the journey I had taken to honor the boundary, as opposed to my initial self centered perspective. For some people, doing the work of setting the boundary is hard emotional work and when it is verbalized there are still residual doubts or fears. If sharing your perspective will unnecessarily exacerbate those, is it really worth it? The other thing to remember if you are other people in this context, is that leading with curiosity could help you to understand why the person needed to create that boundary. Now curiosity is not the same as nosiness. You don’t need to know someone else’s whole life story to honor a boundary. What I mean by curiosity is how have they been impacted by not having the boundary and how will having it improve their lives. If you are the boundary setter, sharing your rationale with people upfront could help them to better understand your need and increase their investment in honoring your boundary. For other people in this context, please be empathetic. This work is not easy.

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Which Choice – Ghosting or Talking?

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Ghosting is not boundary setting. Ghosting is actually avoiding boundary setting. It may seem easier in the short term but ultimately it could rob you of the opportunity to name your boundary for yourself and others. To be clear, I am not on a soap box, I am just making the argument that ghosting should not be conflated with boundary setting. Setting a boundary with another person requires that they are actually made aware of the boundary. Ghosting is literally disappearing from the person’s life with no explanation. Some people argue that folks ‘should know’ when they hurt you or offend you. Seriously? Do you know every time you offend someone? With all the variations in norms, values, and communication styles are we really expecting people to inherently know something that is not stated? Obviously I disagree. I think unless you have in fact named for another person what hurts or offends you, you can’t assume that they know. Now whether you want to spend the energy of telling them or not is up to you, but please stop assuming they know if you never said it. There are a lot of hurt people limping through life just trying to make it from day to day. Chances are they are so focused on surviving that they may miss some cues and telling them could be a growth opportunity for them. I won’t pretend that we are always in the space to want to do the work of boundary setting. That’s fair. And truthfully, there can be a delicious sense of satisfaction that can be derived from never ever speaking to a person that has hurt or offended you. My argument is that you don’t have to ghost them. There are healthy ways to let people go, you can read about them on K. E. Garland’s post titled Monday Notes: How to Release People and Experiences. Ghosting is not sustainable. You can’t always ghost folks. For starters sometimes they keep coming back because they haven’t figured out that they have been ghosted. That is literally the worst. And depending on their role in your life ghosting may not be an option. As hard as it is, in most situations clearly stating your boundaries may get you the better outcome. But let’s set the record straight, stating your boundaries and expecting change are not synonymous. Setting the boundary makes your expectations clear – that is what you can control. Behavior change and reactions to you boundaries are totally up to the other party – you cannot control that. So what to do? I find that making a plan helps me. I plan what I will say, how I will say it, when and where I will say it (see more about it here). I plan for the response that concerns me the most and the response that I hope I will get. The response usually falls somewhere in the middle. I won’t lie, it takes courage and E-N-E-R-G-Y but avoiding takes energy too. The approach you choose is up to you – no judgement. Ultimately only you know what is best for you. But remember staying silent about a problem guarantees that it won’t get fixed, saying something at least gives you a 50/50 chance.

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Boundary Related Grief

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Here is a fact, boundary setting can sometimes result in loneliness and grief. Drawing a line in the sand and telling folks not to cross it is your right. You deserve to be treated the way you want to be treated. However, just like you have choices so do other people, and sometimes they choose to disengage rather than honor your wishes. And when that happens, there can be a sense of loss. Now I know there are some people that we are glad to see go, but for the most part we as humans don’t like to be left. When someone leaves us or we have to leave someone there is a very real possibility, if not probability, that it will hurt. Even if the person doesn’t sever ties, boundary setting can also mean that you have to change the relationship you have with someone because they either can’t, or won’t, honor your wishes. That could mean changing the amount of time you spend with them, or the way you engage with them. It could also mean you choosing to walk away from that relationship altogether. Regardless of whether its a partial or complete loss, there is a sense of loss that can go along with the decision. If the relationship was a close one, or connected to other friends, family or co-worker’s, the change in the relationship could make group settings awkward. The hard part of loss that occurs from boundary setting is that there are no rituals to help bring closure. No one comes to take you out, to cheer you up, or bring you food. No one sends you cards, or comes over to sit with you. Very often, it is a loss that you experience with no days off or acknowledgement and very often with no support. Sometimes you don’t even feel or realize the loss right away, but when it hits that grief is still real. If you’re like me you turn it over in your head a number of times trying to make sure that you made the right choice. And when you determine that you have, it hurts all over again that the person wouldn’t or couldn’t honor your boundary. I think it’s important to mourn all losses; to give yourself space to be sad, or hurt, or angry, or whatever emotion comes up when you realize that someone that used to take up space in your life won’t do it in the same way anymore. That hurt is real and should be acknowledged and attended to. Give yourself time to heal. The relationship may or not be restored at some later date, but in the immediate you will need to recover. Losing parts of relationships or losing them altogether can be lonely. And if you are in the minority regarding the necessity for your boundary, that loneliness can be compounded. It can lead to self doubt, and even some shame. Added to that, you have to learn how to navigate life with this new boundary in place which means changing your own behaviors. If the person you had to walk away from or who chose to walk away from you was a part of your support system, you have to simultaneously navigate the loss of the broken or altered relationship while adjusting to the loss of their support. Although we like to believe differently, people are rarely all good or all bad, so chances are you will miss the person. Even if everyone in your life is celebrating the person’s departure, there is a probability that you will miss them. It’s ok. Unless they were completely heinous, there are probably parts of them that you enjoyed. Allow yourself the chance to mourn. Try to give yourself the space and time you will need to get past it. Regardless of their behavior, you deserve to be able to mourn. Someone else’s bad behavior doesn’t make you less human. Feeling a sense of loss is a natural part of separation. Acknowledging it helps to provide closure. I promise, you will heal and it doesn’t have to be immediate regardless of other people’s opinions. It’s par for the course when making the courageous step to set a boundary.

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