• Pushing yourself to grow, take risks, try something new and brave and seemingly cool and oh-so you, really you?
• Pushing yourself so far out of the comfort zone of your natural strengths that you’re entering  a full-blown state of chronic misery and anxiety?

Not everyone lives like this, but sometimes it’s easy to confuse a healthy challenge with an unnatural one that drains all your enthusiasm. Some of us call it “making lives just a wee harder than it needs to be.” Others might call it “getting lost on the wrong path” or “barking up the wrong tree.”  It could be a simple case of: Trying this, not liking it, time to take a right turn and fast.

What are signs that your challenge is perhaps one to reconsider? How do you know when a state of discomfort is just you blowing through some old cycles and on to new pastures and to just keep going?

Sometimes it’s trial and error. But here are a few signs that might signal that you’re making yourself walk the plank and it’s time to come back to home base.

• You feel anxietous even when you picture the arrival zone at the end of some short-term challenges.
• You’ve lost all motivation and inspiration, even after a holiday, even after a restful weekend, even after [insert whatever here makes your sails flutter].
• You’re starting to feel depressed, melancholic, unsociable.
• You wonder why you’re not more excited about creating this new venture for yourself.
• When you think of some alternate paths to the one you’re on, something in you screams, That one! Yes! Over there!
• Something in you wants to raise the white flag.
• When you look at the highlights of the last ten years, they in no way match up to what you’re doing. So, if you’re trying to adjust to life as a farmer when you love the honking noise of a city and the smell of exhaust, you’re probably swimming upstream.
• When you spend most of your days — consecutively — dreaming of going to bed at night.
• When people post “I love my life” statuses on Facebook and Twitter your automatic response is something along the lines of “F you.”

It’s great to strive and have ambitions and want to take chances and risks and use a recession for a new opportunity. But if it makes you miserable stop and ask yourself: What am I really good at? What situations do I thrive in? What did I love to do as a kid? The answers are there, just be open for them.

And here’s to pursing the right kind of challenges, where you use your strengths and natural gifts and go with the flow of your joyful life. It’s not failure to “quit” and take a new turn. Success is knowing when to get out and on to the next best thing.

Go for it!

xo

I detest  the deep rut of worry. It’s self-absorbing and it stops most of the flow of possibility, creativity, joy or juicy connections.

And yet I do it, even when I know in any given situation I have a choice: Worry through it or Not worry through it.

I think it’s easy to stay with Worry when we don’t give ourselves a picture or feeling of what “not worry” is.

In the past week I got a new perspective on worry, stress, et al. It came through a very sad occurence, the death of a dear, sassy, strong friend who I saw in her last few days of life after a brave battle with cancer.

I was in part greedily wondering if this would be a lesson to me to stop sweating some areas of my life. What came to me was, No, part of life is having these challenges and Oh Shits and Jesus Christ Will I Ever ______, and What now?

These work-money-love-existential struggles and worries are the gift and grit of daily life. It’s what we do. The choice here is, am I going to roll up my sleeves and get after it with verve and playfulness, or am I going to blink my eyes and say “scary” and move through the hard times with one hand over an eye? I want the more verve, thank you very much!

That was when I decided to love the ability to have worries, preoccupations, challenges and the Oh Shits.

It’s living. The beautiful challenges that come from living deeply, taking risks to have richer connections with people; challenging yourself in more fulfilling ways and showing up for people, places and things when stormy weather systems move in.

I know when my friend S got sick, she looked at her illness for lessons. And she was an ace at showing up.

The lesson — or awakening here is thus: be strong, savor those daily life worries. Thrive in them, that’s what we’re here for.

A comfort in knee socks, the way the top of the sock touched my knee cap.

It helps to detach from self when targeted by mocking bully-ettes.

Jesus is hot! But Judas had the best songs.

Don’t rock the boat.

A guitar fits perfectly under the bed and never needs to be anywhere else.

A broken wrist won’t kill you. Makes good weapon.

• Running feels good — the air against the neck and arms and body parts.
• Don’t laugh in ballet class.
• Teachers don’t like it when you stare out the windows during class. 
• But a good report card is a wonderful thing.
• Sports is the best escape from playmate politics.
• Closets must be closed during sleeping time or god knows what creatures will come alive and haunt the room during dream time.
• Bodies of water — pools, oceans, lakes, ponds, baths — are life’s sweet spots.
• Winning a game of cards is a great feeling!
• Grandmothers travel with Sucrets. Yum.
• Playing piano to a metronome is no fun.
• Bed time rocks.
• The word “no” sucks.

Here’s a brief encapsulation on some Happiness Basics: A Cosmo Quiz! Ready? … just five small questions. Go!

1. What is considered to give us the most overall happiness?

A. Alone time

B. Relationships & connections

C. Having children

D. A giant, quasi-deserved tax refund

2. People feel happier when talking about:

A. How much sugar to add to their baked muffins.

B. Their children

C. The meaning of life

D. How their arch rival in high school who also stole their boy/girlfriend was recently left by their spouse and declared bankrupcy.

3. True or false: Happiness is something that should come easily, like — get Zen baby, it will come.

True. Take a chill pill and rip up your To Do list.

False. You gotta make a little effort in this life, babe!

4. True or false: Money can buy happiness.

A. True. The wealthiest people in the world are actually much happier than studies admit.

B. False. Money actually leads to despair and emptiness.

C. A combo of A and B.

5. Humans are generally great predictors of what will make them happy.

A. Hell yeah! True as these blonde roots.

B. No way. We suck at it. False false false.

***** Answers below******

Answers:

1.  B) Relationships and connections are the motherlode of our happiness, according to the PBS documentary This Emotional Life.  We’re made to connect to and love one another. Neat, eh?

2.  C) According to this NYTimes article, deep conversation is more happy-making than shallow small-talk b.s. stuff. Hooray!

3. False. It takes more effort to be happy and optimistic than to sink into sulkiness and melancholy, something Gretchen Rubin wonderfully points out in her book, The Happiness Project. Anything good in life takes effort: relationships, good health, work, creative projects, raising your kids, staying interested in your life. Make the effort to clean out your closet, give your loved-one a kiss instead of a sharp word, say something positive in a conversation, give yourself a high five for a job well done instead of focusing on what wasn’ t done. Smile even when you don’t feel like it. Happiness is made up of a series of small, meaningful efforts.

4. C). For someone who doesn’t have enough money to pay their bills, buy food and put a roof over their head, money buys happiness at a basic survival level. But once the basic needs are met, the amount of happiness money adds to a life is almost inconsequential. Daniel Pink addresses money matters in his latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Even in business, money doesn’t really motivate people over time. However, money does matter in the initial stages of getting someone to say Yes to the job.

b. False. Human beings have a pretty terrible track record at predicting what will make them happy — and what will make them miserable, as well. The upside: we’re adaptable. Upside No. 2: Now that we know this, and we arrive at that surprisingly unhappy place, instead of staying there and forcing it to work (a job, a relationship, a book, a project), why don’t we readjust and go to plan B before it’s too late and know it’s part of our human nature instead of a personal shortcoming and get on with it, already!

Big Red hasn’t used this ad in years but I just discovered that Verizon’s latest TV ads are a remake of these strange corny old ads.

Two questions:

Why, in 2010, can’t an ad agency come up with an original idea?
Why do we get these earbugs? 

Earbugs. They’re those stupid tunes that get stuck in your head on replay. 

Here’s what I found out about the earbug phenom from Discover mag:

An earworm is a mental mosquito bite that produces a cognitive “itch.” And if you can’t remember all of the song or some of the words, the brain just keeps going round and round trying to scratch that itch. Earbugs also apparently happen more often in women, musicians and people who worry. If you’re tired or stressed out, you’re wide open to a predatory ditty.

Here’s a look at the old Big Red ad.

Now compare it to the Verizon ad.

Can you hear the jingle now?

I recently received a postcard from a friend I’ve known for a while, who was traveling overseas. I’d never seen his handwriting before. It felt like such a personal, intimate expression, especially in this modern age of emails and texts and  Times New Roman font.

This reminded me of how years ago, after the end of a relationship, I felt saddened by the fact that I had no idea what my boyfriend’s handwriting looked like — like something vital was missing.

Handwriting feels intimate. That’s probably why you can’t beat the impact of a handwritten letter.

I wonder if I’ll ever get to know my niece and nephew’s handwriting.

I just wrote mine and like any really honest inventory there’s always something revealed: what really matters and a theme or two.

There were plenty of events and accomplishments I could have put down on my Best-Of list that would make sense, such as: having written a novel (albeit at the speed of light). But in my heart it wasn’t fulfilling. I actually felt more moved and excited by the first poem I finally wrote this year, just yesterday. There’s a message here obviously.

What a Best Of list can show you is a potpourri of: What you did; a theme of a year; movement and direction; and point to goals/themes/commitments/devotions/whatever-you-call-them for 2010.

So, I invite you to write your heart-felt personal Best Of* list for 2009. See what you find there.

*What counts as a best-of? Some examples to get you started:

A big-ass accomplishment: You arrived somewhere new and great in your work life, personal life, creative life, spiritual life, child- and pet-raising life.

The internal stuff: You reacted to that same ol’ button-pushing situation in a new and improved way. And YOU know it. Or, you had a conversation that was at a higher level even if for five minutes.

Courage: What did you do that took courage and faith?

Action: Where did you take action to begin to move in the direction of your dreams (even if dreams are fuzzy)? In-the-moment moments: Did you walk in the dusk and stop to look at the silver fairy dust and ethereal light and declare, “Oh WOW”? Because stopping to notice this beauty, some might say, is mastery.

Anything else that whispers in your ear. Trust your instincts of what counts for a 2009 Growth-worthy Best-Of Accomplishment.

Here’s to a kick-ass 2010. You’ve earned it, don’t you think?

Even the sun rises on "quitters"

“I don’t want to be a quitter.”

It’s the American rally cry. To quit is to be weak, a loser, a person of questionable moral fiber. And so we stay in the job, in the same types of relationships, we do the same sports, read the same books and carry on in the same way of thinking — even after any of these may have stopped working for us.

And of course there are all kinds of positives about sticking with it during tough times. However — what about the times when quitting might be the best thing to do?

Maybe our resistance started when we were young kids doing a sport or playing an instrument we hated but our parents said, “You’re not going to be a quitter.” But what if you had quit the swim team or piano lessons, the scout group or dance classes and instead found that you liked tennis, writing or calculating quadratic equations?

Seth Godin writes about the joy of quitting which gets the ball rolling on this topic.

With that in mind, the question here is:

Is there anything that you could quit – or let’s say RELEASE – that would let you discover something you’d rather do?

Is there something you could let go of that would make you breathe more easily and add a spring in your step and give you a bit of an excited rev in your engine to go forth and manifest?

It can take a lot of courage and discernment to be a quitter.

Letting go and being open to the faith of new possibilities takes balls.

Also, giving yourself the space to leave may give you the moxie to jump in and try new things. You don’t have to be imprisoned by sticking with it if it continues to be unfruitful and sucky. We’re not suffer-mongerers here!

So, with all this in mind –- how can releasing a person, place, thing or behavior make your life even better?

Chicago is out of the Oly 2016 bid and I’m glad. I’m happy about it for a couple of reasons.

1) Of all the countries in the bidding, Brazil hasn’t hosted the Olympics, and who doesn’t want to go to Rio, even if it’s through their flat screens? And at this very moment it was announced that Rio got it, so yay.

2) I hated the little I heard on the news about how the Obamas campaigned for it. Yes, this is an impulsive off-the-cuff response to radio news bits. But there were a couple statements that made me cringe at the self-centered and sentimental nature of American expression.

Apparently, NPR news said that Michelle O’s  empassioned plea to the committee included the fact that sports were really important to her as a child and that her father would throw the baseball around with her and it was so special blah blah blah.

Isn’t that a bit embarrassing to think that the First Lady imagines that the European members of the Olympic Committee will flip the switch to put the Games in Chicago because of her chidhood attachment with sports?

Next up was Obama saying “Nothing would make me happier than [something like walking out with his wife and daughters to the Olympics in his home town.]” Really? Nothing?

The Olympics over a lower unemployment rate? A repairing economy? A healthcare reform plan that has bipartisanship backing? (Maybe that’s like wishing for life on Mars). The Olympics trumps the happiness that would come with ending this ridiculous middle east post-9/11 roving war we’ve been fighting?

I know, it’s just a figure of speech.

But on this day, Friday October 2, it struck me how much our American culture focuses on the sentimental self-focused here’s-what-it-means-to-me-as-it-pertains-to-my-personal-life appeal to campaign for whatever the going cause or interest is.

It would have been nice to hear our First Couple talk more about what Chicago could have offered the athletes and citizens of the world at large, rather than what it would do for the Obamas. That would have shown great hostmanship.

But then that’s just my 2c on a blistery fall day in Seattle.

Go Rio!

Moving into new terrain is exciting! And stressful. Don't fret, pet.

This week I went to see my fabulous body-doc, Dr. Emily Transue (she writes books, too). As I was telling her about the changes presented to me this year, she told me this:

The body registers good change and bad change exactly the same on stress tests.

So, you could be getting married or getting laid off a job — and the body will still process/experience/feel the change at the same level of stress.

I’m not talking about sideline emotional states of sadness, loss or grief — just stress. The kind of stress that makes the body feel tired and maybe puts you to bed an hour or so earlier than ususal, gives you the jitters, adult acne, weird appetite cravings.

So when you are going through a more-or-less positive change and find yourself saying things like, “I don’t know why I haven’t been able to sleep/I’m tired all the time/I can’t concentrate/I’m feeling stressed — I should really be so grateful” — there might be a good reason. You’re going through a Change. Humans react stressfully to change. Change is scary. Even if it’s something wonderful, filled with possibility — a new relationship, new job, new home, new business, new wardrobe — newness is unchartered territory. Unchartered territory makes the heart palpitate. That’s the formula. So know it and accept it, I say. And remember that these heart-palpatating states of change (ok, stress) might be preferable to being in a boredom-induced rut.

A coaching instructor recently told her class, The more you accept all of yourself, the easier life is.

Nobody said change was easy. But it’s inevitable. Enjoy thinking about all the possibilities that can come from it.

And what if you prepared for the best?