Keep pushing.
Be badass.
The other choice?
There is no other choice.
None of us have it easy. Just remember…anything is possible my friends. You just have to be willing to bleed out of your eyeballs.
#GetUp #StandUp #TodayIsTheDay
This Jerry McGuire scene is one of my absolute favorites, and pops in my head weekly when the same conversation with everyone in my personal and professional life, seems to play on repeat mode:
“Do other people think about this stuff?”
(Forget the sports specific theme here, and roll with this for me.) And scene:
Many of us live in pain, locked in and loaded with fear of being judged at every turn, we suppress huge parts of who we are or what we want because we think we’re going to disappoint someone else. We’re convinced the wheels will fly straight off the bus of life going 100 miles per hour if we speak up about what we really think is right. We’re adults. We’re supposed to stay in our lane, act like it, and not ruffle any feathers.
What a bunch of crap that is! I’m thinking we should all be a little more like Jerry.
“I had lost the ability to bullshit.”
“It was the me that I’d always wanted to be.”
“I was 35. I had started my life.
We should bullshit a lot less, be who we want to be, and start life now if we haven’t already, at 35, 45, or 85 because we can and It’s never too late. We should shout from the rooftops about what we’re passionate about, stand up for what we believe in and speak up about what matters. When a “who’s with me!” fails (because it sometimes will) and when it seems like everyone around us thinks we’ve lost our minds (which they sometimes will), we will at least sleep good at night knowing we left it all out there on the dance floor.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a beer bellied old man at the end of his life on any porch I’ve ever sat on, who’s told me he wished he’d never spoken up.
Today is the day. Show yourself “the money,” baby!
#ThinkItSayItDoIt #LessFearMoreActionHappyLife #ThanksJerry
It’s funny how for no rhyme or reason this crazy life sends us in 1,000 different mood directions on any given day. It’s like this never ending game on figuring out which end is up.
I like a good challenge.
Today was good. Productive with client work, a run, and busy cranking that to-do list, yet I wondered why I woke up this morning feeling like crap and a little blah all day long. Reason? Nothing? Anything specific going on? Not really. I don’t know how all this works, either, people- I just try my best to bound out of bed and make things happen- even when I wake up feeling like someone stole my puppy.
My favorite part of the day today to turn my frown upside down was my 2-hour Skype Happy Hour wine time with an old friend from back home. Have you tried this? It is so fun, and something you might never think of doing. (I have my friends Dana & Erik in Chicago to thank for the idea.) So tonight, sipping wine, talking into the screen on my laptop with an old friend who’s known me since 1st grade, both of us in pajamas even though it was only 6pm felt so nice. There’s something to be said for someone you have to explain nothing to. This friend and I are so different we may as well be oil and water, but we know and love each other like sisters and would pretty much take that bullet if needed. This is a person that I feel lucky to have. I know no matter where I go and what I do, this is someone who will always be there, period.
I hope you all reading this are lucky enough to have someone like this is your life. It sure makes me feel thankful. If you don’t have a person like this, they are available and out there, you just have to be willing to barf your feelings, problems, nutty thoughts, excitements, hopes, dreams, heartbreaks, and more to them. They will do the same, and in return you will find a friendship/family in letting your freak flag fly. It often takes a long time to get to the full-acceptance place with a friend like this, but when you do it will be very much worth the hard work and wait. Sipping wine in PJ’s, Thursday night after work talking about life- the real gritty stuff that most people hate talking about, while laughing your ass off with a good pal, in the judgement-free zone is fantastic.
Lucky, lucky me.
So after my friend Skype-fest, I was sitting here working away on my laptop, clearing out my inbox and returning an email to yet another old friend. I wrote to him how much I think about and miss my friends Katie and Sam who both died last year. Everyday seems more surreal that they are gone. On my run today I saw a Jetta, and as usual I expected it to be Sam (because that’s the car he drove.) As I shared with this friend about how much I missed the two, I listened again to a voicemail Katie left me on August 20, 2012. I love that I saved this message. I saved it because it was the sweetest and kindest message about a dream I made happen and only a friend like Katie would’ve known how much it meant to me. Something I was super proud of and most people would tell me good job! – but Katie, really just knew. She was a less words is more kind of gal. Not a phone talker or babbler like me at all, but on this particular day she happened to babble on for 1 minute and 10 seconds on my voicemail. I’m sure glad she did.
Her message on my phone from nearly 4 years ago, is one of my most cherished things.
So tonight I listened to it again, and cried. Again.
I don’t think I cry when I listen to that particular message because I miss Katie. I think I cry because Katie was the absolute epitome of a person who truly cared about and loved me, and I won’t see her in this world again. She was that friend who knew the good, the bad, the ugly. She was the friend who you’d never have to explain anything to, she just got it and was always there even if we didn’t talk all the time. I always knew that, and it was so special. She accepted me just as is. When you have a funky day and can’t explain it. When life feels hard, when you think that no one cares – about anything in the world, it is always nice to know there are some people who do care. They will Skype Happy Hour wine time with you for hours, or they’ll remind you on a voicemail, just how much they always noticed you trying your best to follow your dreams.
Whether I can talk to Katie in person or on Skype, or It’s another amazing girl friend who I can still see on the other end of a screen, at the end of a day like today I feel loved. Thank goodness for solid old friends! When technology so often fails at helping us feel truly connected to the people we love, tonight it proved otherwise for me. Far, far away can somehow feel so close, just when you need it.
How do you stay connected with your good friends?
#Friendship #LessStuffMoreLoveHappyLife #RememberCelebrateLive
Rainy chilly Saturday night, not feeling so hot with a little bit of a cold. All snuggled in I am, and in a effort to be not only productive, but reflective, even with the sniffles, I’m flipping pages going through a couple old notebooks. (My regular give it a once-over after I’ve used up all the pages to see if I missed any “to-do’s” or important things, then toss.) This is what I see just a few page flips in:
(“Tons” of money kind of cracks me up. Was I having a 6 year old moment there?)
I can’t say I’m surprised I wrote the above on a certain friends birthday in February last year…what would have been her 37th birthday. She’s always on my mind, but on a few specific few days each year like her birthday, I make sure to doubly check myself to make sure I’m practicing what I preach and making my best attempt to live my goals.
Like you I’m sure, I fail miserably at being on point with all things all the time, I say yes to things I shouldn’t- that suck time and energy and don’t give back personally, professionally, or financially nearly enough, I forget to have gratitude as much as I should, and every once in a while I even have baditude! (Bad + attitude.) The worst? That damn gerbil wheel I despise so much is found under my own two feet too, every year or so. (Until I fling myself off, screaming and tearing…just jumping and gasping for that non-gerbil wheel air I love and need to survive and thrive.)
Thankfully when we find ourselves slipping into bad habits, and spin, spin, spinning like those little rodents- we have THE CHOICE to jump back into whatever awesome reality we know is out there, just as fast as we realize we’re spinning.
To my sweet, funny friend who inspired me to write this “Keep in mind” trio, thank you for reminding me that we all deserve to be crazy happy.
Indeed we do.
#TodayIsTheDay #KickYourOwnAss #StayTheCourse
What makes you crazy happy?
PS ~ You know what would make me crazy happy? If you scrolled down to the bottom of this page and signed up to get my blog posts via email, that’s what. Whoop!
Nah…I’m here!
I know It’s been a few weeks, so sorry to leave my blog followers hanging. You know I love to write and share here. I promise to post more regularly. 2015 felt like a whirlwind of what month is it? Then, boom! Here we are kicking off 2016.
Even though work has been very busy, we did manage to escape for a couple days, continuing to follow our “less stuff, more experiences” lifestyle, and opted to buy and spend 2 nights at a friends beach house in lieu of physical gifts for Christmas this year. Whaddya know, it ended up being near 80 degrees in North Carolina for a few days! Yeah!
Bike rides, beach time, and sand in toes was a very happy holiday time:
Nerd pose! I was wearing one of my Play It Forward shirts, so wanted to try and make you laugh:)
Here’s to having more freedom in 2016! Dip your foot in the chilly beach water, then jump in, baby! This is our one life and the blue lollipops are all out there for the taking.
#LessStuffMoreExperiencesHappyLife #BeachChristmas #FindYourMojo
Ahhh- I SO love this! Graham Hill is great. I watched this video a few years ago and thought it was completely awesome and spot-on. When it popped back up as I was perusing the TED Talk archives this week, I thought it deserved another post.
Making room, “for the good stuff”:
Years on the road owning so little and always hearing from people I met wishing they could “do more”, was the prefect opportunity for me to create my business and help clients do just just that. Oh the freedom of unleashing what we do not use or really need, so we have more time, “space”, and money!
Here’s to getting rid of all that weighs us down.
#LessStuffMoreFreedomHappyLife #LiveSimpleDoMore #TodayIsTheDayWhatAreYouWaitingFor?
1.) Stop going to Target. (That absurd “Dollar Spot” section right when you walk in the door riddled with plastic crap made in China should seriously be outlawed.)
2.) Stop going to the mall.
3.) Stop shopping online for things you, your kids, your brother, your mother, and your neighbor don’t need.
Black Friday sale, Cyber Monday sale, sale for no reason to warp your mind into thinking you need it to be happy sale…all this holiday shopping marketing and mayhem blows my mind. Moreover, the fact that so many of us still buy into it all (literally and figuratively) in the year 2015 when we know better, makes me feel like I want to smack my fellow humans to wake us up and out of the drone zone.
People, what are we doing?!
Can we discuss some examples of what you, me and the people you love and I love/like/work with/share office or home space with/teach our kids might actually need for gifts or “treats” this year?
*Our health
*Some extra free time
*A break
*A good laugh
*Some love/lovin’/a big fat hug
*A few extra hours of sleep
*Quality, accepting, comfortable, company
*Yummy fresh food
*Clean water
Every hour we spend at the mall, we’re not spending making dinner with friends, playing with our kids, or making whoopie with someone we’re in love with. Every hundred bucks we spend on our 20th pair of jeans, the newest electronics, or another pair of shoes, we don’t spend on an extra mortgage payment to pay off our homes a year earlier, a gym membership that could help keep our hearts ticking a few years longer, or a credit card payment that could finally set us debt free. Every minute of time we spend on putting energy into “stuff” instead of ourselves and the ones we love around us, we are failing at truly taking advantage of this ONE SINGLE LIFE.
I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t like wasting time when it is the only thing we cannot get back.
Later in life or at the end of this life, our kids won’t remember that time they got the coolest toys for Christmas at the expense of you working until 11pm every night, they will remember when you showed up to 4th grade school lunch as a surprise on a random Tuesday. Later in life or at the end of this life our friends won’t remember that trinket or tchotchke we ran around like mad trying to find just in time for the holiday gift exchange, they will remember when we were a shoulder while they went through a horrible divorce, or that we were the only one who visited that time they were sick in the hospital. Later in life or at the end of this life, our spouses won’t remember how we left the fanciest and sparkliest gifts underneath the tree, they will remember how we always made coffee for them on lazy snuggly Sunday mornings, or that we left secret love notes around the house for them to find at random.
Save your money and save your time. Don’t buy (ahem) into this shopping frenzy chaos. Instead, maybe go call your mother or grandparents, tell them you love them, and that you’re on your way over to their house right now so you can all have tea and eat cherry vanilla ice cream together.
‘Tis the season to prioritize.
#LessStuffMoreTimeTogetherHappyLife #ThingsThatMatter #HappierHolidays
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Seriously.
My Grandfather has always called me a Pisser. (Translation: feisty girl who will never give up until she makes “it” work/happen.)
My friend Gigi tells me my business cards should read: “Diane Peacock, getting shit DONE since 1978.”
I have to say I agree with them:
There’s something to be said for a person who’s come from humble beginnings, gotten their ass handed to them more than once, or um…ten times, and still comes out the other side ready, wanting, and willing to fight to make things happen.
I’m that girl.
What drives your purpose and passion?
#Fearless #GetItDone #NeverGiveUp
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