JANUARY

Can you remember who you were
before the world told you
who you should be?

—Danielle LaPorte

Resolutions

I don’t mean to brag but . . .
I finished my 14-day diet in
3 hours and 12 minutes.

Resolution: A firm decision to do or not to do something.

“My name is Kelly and I am a resolution-making failure.”

“HELLO KELLY!” Aha, good, I see I am not alone!

A few years back on January 1, I gave up sugar as a New Year’s resolution. Unfortunately, on January third I was found eating a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Fish Food . . . with a side of Christmas cookies. In fairness, I did feel I needed to rid the house of all temptation—easier to do it in one fell swoop! Another January, I joined a gym with a life-
time membership, pledging to go five times a week. Yes, I still have the membership; no I haven’t been there in over ten months. But this past January I figured it out. Forget body, let’s work on the spirit—that’s something I can stick to! So I started the free twenty-one-day meditation recordings with Oprah and Deepak Chopra. Honestly, this meditation was so amazing, I mean it was literally life-transforming! Well, it was, at least for four of the twenty-one days that I actually listened to the recordings.

Ugh! New Year’s resolutions! If you are like me, you start January with a bang. You are doing everything you know you should be doing, you are journaling your reflections, juicing or blending your green smoothies, heading to the gym after work, and scheduling a calendar full of time with friends, family, and even date nights with your significant other. If you are also like me, by the tenth of January, you find yourself discouraged by the winter produce that’s available in your grocery store, so you begin exchanging green drinks at the farmers market for café lattes at Starbucks. By the twenty-first, you will probably deem that January offers an entirely unacceptable degree of coldness in the air (oh, yes, even people in Florida are known to do this) and find that instead of meeting up with friends for dinner, you would rather binge-watch episodes of Friends on Netflix (while also binging on a nice bowl of ice-cream). Sadly, by the beginning of February, your favorite spin or kick-boxing instructor has left your gym or yoga studio and the replacement instructor actually makes you viscerally angry because he/she doesn’t instruct the participants to do enough sit-ups (jeez!). Or worse, that new instructor expects you to do entirely too many sit-ups (is Mrs. Perfect Body kidding me?). This frustration allows you to believe that it is not only in your best interest that you skip class but also in the new instructor’s best interest that you forgo the class.

Is this what we have come to? Are we quitters? Are we often lazy, sometimes apathetic, ridiculously overwhelmed, and do we use these excuses to be quitters? Well, yeah, I guess I do. I see you smiling so I think you do, too.

This year, my only resolution is to be resolute! If I take something on—like scheduling a space each month to organize—then I will stick with it. Being a serial “resolution failure,” you may ask how I plan on achieving this resoluteness. For me, it truly comes down to smaller goals. As good as a year membership at a gym looks, I know myself; I get bored or things change. I have recently taken up purchasing class cards on Groupon versus yearlong or lifetime memberships. This allows me to try things first. I can take the time to feel the vibe of the studio/gym and then choose my poison. (Yes, most often I view physical exercise as poison.) All kidding aside though, exercise is modern medicine and it will keep you healthy and strong. Yes, I know this for a fact. So rather than focusing on having the resolution to achieve six-pack abs by summer (which would be really awesome), make your goals smaller. Perhaps, just do enough core work to simply alleviate some of your back pain. Or maybe even smaller, surely we can carry more grocery bags in from the car each week, or carry a child (or puppy) for longer periods of time. Choosing the stairs over the elevator . . . that’s a classic, we know it! But are we doing it? This January I will! (And I hope you will, too).

Don’t want to place physical activity on your resolution list? I get it. What about the age-old “diet/eating healthy” resolution? Most of my Januarys have been spent tossing everything white (sugar, flour, etc.) into the garbage. February, I am back in the grocery store purchasing . . . you got it, sugar, flour, etc. Many health gurus swear by the brilliant idea of eating a diet that is 70 percent “whole food,” or food that is as close to its original state as possible. That seems manageable because it leaves 30 percent wiggle room for reality (reality is also known as sugar, flour, etc.).

This January you may have already begun to be more resolute; you have this book and with it the ability to journal your goals and dreams for the next twelve months. Stick with it, write your life chapters, take small goals and knock them out of the park! Go ahead, pick a small resolution and then stick to it! Fall off track in February. Well, hell, isn’t that what February is for? “Fall off February,” “Failure February,” whatever you call it, try and avoid it. But, if it catches you off guard and you find yourself on the couch, remote in one hand, cookies in the other, forgive yourself—failure happens. Except this year be different, be resolute, but also be resilient and recognize that one failure is not a reason to quit entirely.

Failure is simply a reason to try again. So forgive yourself for the small failures and encourage yourself to continue on the path of greater health. The new year always offers within it a form of forgiveness and a nice place to start over! Here is your new beginning. Your year is a 365-page book—write a good one!

Reflections

WHAT ARE YOUR RESOLUTIONS THIS YEAR?

Living

You don’t have to find out
you are dying to start living.

—Zach Sobiech

Living: Not dead; having life. Currently active.

We are not guaranteed a long, healthy, or easy life. I mean, certainly we can do things to protect ourselves. We can choose to eat foods that are GMO-free, organic, and as close to their natural state as possible. We can choose to run, surf, hike, bike ride, practice yoga, or meditate, all in an effort to lower our stress levels and keep our bodies strong. (It has only been a week. Please tell me you are keeping up with your healthy lifestyle resolution choices!) o Yet even with all these good lifestyle choices, we cannot predict the day that will be our last. Imagine if you were able to know the date that you would die. Imagine it was looming on a calendar. Would you live your life differently?

Tim McGraw’s song “Live Life Like You’re Dying” describes, in his perfect Southern twang, what the fictional character of his song did when he learned he had only months to live. He jumped out of an airplane, climbed the Rockies, rode on a bull named Blue Manchu, and was quick to love and forgive.

A cynic may say, “Sure, you can do that if you are dying, but if you aren’t dying, there are mortgages, rent, taxes, literally a stack of dishes in the sink that need washing, and a world of obligations that can stop you from riding a bull or climbing a mountain.” I agree it isn’t realistic to do all of these things (bummer, I had my eyes on Blue Manchu). But come on, we can do some of it. We can stop saying “no” and maybe force ourselves to say, “yes” once in a while. Yes to something new. Yes to signing up to run a race. Yes to meeting a friend for dinner on a specific date each month. Yes to taking a bike ride with your kids every Sunday. The dishes in the sink? They’ll wait for you (if your family is anything like mine, I can guarantee they’ll wait for you). The bills, they’ll still be there waiting to be paid.

Here is the truth, and believe me it isn’t easy for me to tell you this, but you do need to know . . . you are dying. You might be thinking, “Dying? I don’t even have a cold!” Yet, every day you live brings you one day closer to your death. So with that cheery thought in the front of your mind I recommend making a list. No, not a bucket list (although that is fun, too). No, a list of wishes and dreams. This list should be a bit different than a bucket list because the purpose is not to create a list to cross things off until you are left with a list of scratched-out items and time on your hands. Nope, create a list that grows with you. Because as we hurl toward our impending demise, the truth is it should be fun! And it should be ever-changing. What was “fun” for me in my twenties, isn’t so fun anymore (wearing a bikini)!

Seriously, I wanted to be an actress starting at age four. Around the time of my fortieth birthday, after working on some TV shows (Google Sally Kellerman Ghost Stories and you can see my debut), I decided that acting wasn’t for me—right now. It didn’t get scratched off my list, I just added more things to the list. I wasn’t giving up a dream. My life can change, and one day I will want to act again. Is acting on your list? Go to your local community theater and audition. If you don’t get the part, offer to work behind the scenes and then audition for the next one . . . and the next. Find it’s not for you? Keep it on your list and gracefully move on to your next “Blue Manchu.”

You know what I discovered was for me? Stand-up paddle surfing in head-high waves! I promise you, in a million years I never thought that would be for me; for a huge part of my life I was afraid of the ocean! But right now, you can’t get me out of the ocean (even in the winter in New York). It took time, going out on the flattest of days, riding small little ripples back to the shore, challenging myself to face a fear and reminding myself that I don’t have forever to learn this. You don’t either.

Speaking sweeter? Loving deeper? How can you not have time for that? YOU ARE DYING! It sucks, but now you know. So make yourself a “Living Wish List,” not once but a thousand times! Let it evolve, let yourself experience some of it and forgo some of it. Add new stuff and delete old stuff and then see what transpires for you. This is your wish list. I wish I surfed, acted, spent more time reading. I wish I was nicer, was more fastidious, more resolute, ate more ice-cream (gasp), spoke more calmly to my teenagers (hey I didn’t say this list was easy). I wish, I wish, I wish. Make your list, filled with loving intentions, badass fear, concurring goals and wishes, and let it change. Remember, you aren’t married to it.

The truth is, the day I die I would love nothing more than for my family to see a list of dreams on the refrigerator and a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink. How about you?

Here is a peek at my list (honestly, my real one is like five pages and growing):

Reflections

WHAT IS YOUR LIVING WISH LIST?

Narcissism

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest people may cheat you. Be honest and sincere anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. You’re your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

—Mother Teresa

Narcissism: The misguided belief that everything is about you.

My favorite part of this quote from Mother Teresa is where she says, “For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

We all react. Example: you are driving down the road singing Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” at the top of your lungs when some man-child who looks like he should be driving a Big Wheel instead of a car crosses the yellow line into your lane. You react. For me, my reaction often starts with my middle finger or a firm hand pressing maniacally on my horn. Sometimes, it is a finger with one hand, horn with the other. You may even forget he is just a teenager and curse him as a “Horrible excuse for a human being.”

Along with the road hazards, our reactivity is also challenged by social media. For instance, you see on Facebook that your daughter’s friend had five girls over for a sleepover and your daughter was left off the guest list. Your reaction is to hit the passive-aggressive “LIKE” button, thinking smugly, I “liked” this to let you know I do not LIKE this.

When it comes to our family members we usually react because we believe we know the motives behind their actions. We often think to ourselves that we have known these sisters, brothers, cousins, parents our whole lives; of course, we know why they do the things they do!

Our belief that we know and understand the driving factors that are the catalysts within our relationships, though, is often not based on the reality of the situation. The belief we hold about the driver of the car that cut me off is that he is some hotshot teenager with his first car, and “he was probably texting” (Wow, I just sounded like my mother!). Your belief about the mom on Facebook is that she is a show-off; she wants to shove her perfect family in everyone’s face. And your family . . . oh, you know your family’s driving factors. Or do you?

I bet you would be surprised to know that these beliefs are just that—your beliefs. It is human nature to judge another person by his or her actions; it is also human nature to assign our own internal meaning to those actions. Nine times out of ten, our assigned meanings are incorrect.

Back to that nut that cut me off. You are right, he is an egotistical teenager, but the fact was he was also running to the hospital to see his grandpa one last time. And “Mrs. Perfect Facebook”—that “friend” of yours with the photos of her perfect child at the perfect sleepover that your daughter wasn’t invited to? Well, you see, those photos are not really intended for you; they are for her. They remind her how blessed she is when times are tough, and she’s been having a lot of those tough times lately. You see her mother is dying and her husband works too much (at least that’s where he says he is) and this mom feels completely dissatisfied and unappreciated at home. When she posts those pictures of her child’s birthday, she is sharing the joys in her life, and hoping that the number of “likes” she gets on these pictures validate her choice of giving up her career so that she could raise her children, or validate her for hosting a successful party even though she is not a stay-at-home mother. The truth is, she works a sixty-hour week and barely knew these children before tonight. She is so caught up in her own problems, that inviting or not inviting your child never crossed her mind. The party, the lack of an invitation, even her social media post—had nothing to do with you. Oh, and your family member whose motives you know so well because you lived together all your life? Well, honestly, you don’t. You don’t know what motivates him or her anymore. You haven’t lived in the same house in over ten, twenty years, maybe more. You no longer know what motivates your sister (or friend) when she makes bad choices; how could you? Instead of assuming that you know why she is doing something, why not ask her? How about your high school friend who has “always been ______________________________” (seriously you could fill that blank in with any word you like, crazy, slutty, selfish, annoying, needy) you don’t know why she is acting out in life at this moment in her late forties, just because you remember how she was in high school.

Why not take a minute to question a behavior rather than judge it. Recognize that more likely than not it has nothing to do with you. Clarify, understand, or, better yet, just offer your fellow “man” the benefit of the doubt. As humans, we just don’t do that enough with one another. Our natural response is to pass judgment.

Let’s stop passing judgment on one another’s actions and stop assigning our own interpreted meaning to those actions. Instead, when we find ourselves in a situation and things happen and two paths cross leaving you feeling annoyed or unhappy, and you find yourself judging another person’s self-centered motives, recognize instead that these actions more than likely have less than nothing to do with you. As Mother Teresa said, “It was never between you and them anyway.”

Reflections

IT WAS NEVER BETWEEN YOU AND ___________________ ANYWAY*

*Perhaps list here people to whom you should be kinder, or to whom you should give the benefit of the doubt; simply recognize their actions are not about you.

Your Very First
“Publisher’s Letter”

Imagine you are the publisher of your own magazine. Write a letter to your audience, yourself. Your “Publisher’s Letter” can be based on one, all, or none of the topics we touch on each month. Need help? For me, I start with an observation or something I did this month, so perhaps you can, too.

WE INTERRUPT THIS CHAPTER TO
DO A QUICK CHECK-IN

My alone time is
sometimes for your safety.

Your first month is finished. What did you think? Did you read three weeks all at once? Week-by-week? Did you write notes? Write a “Publisher Letter” to yourself? If yes, great! Together, we will work on living a more inspired life. If not, go back. Take a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine!) and hide somewhere away from the kids, the dog, the too-long to-do list, and work you brought home from the office. Sit down and write letters to yourself, evaluate your resolutions, your perceptions, and the things you want more of in your life. Freely put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and see what flows. Also feel free to share your experience at ayear
ofinspiredliving.com or #AYOIL.

INSPIRATION STATION

U
se this page to brainstorm topic ideas or even doodle. Let this be your creative space to let your mind run free.