Hi, friends! Hope your week is off to a great start. I’m off to a morning PT session and some tutoring appointments before I head home to pack my suitcase because… tomorrow I’m leaving on a jetplane for Los Angeles for my amazing brother’s MBA graduation! I’m so darn proud of him. This evening, before I go, I’m meeting up with Dana at one of our favorite local places. So glad I get to see her before I leave!

So that’s what my day is looking like. Backing up a bit, how was your Mother’s Day weekend? I was bummed I was not able to be with my mom in person {though we are going to have a belated celebration this upcoming week when my brother and I are both home!} but I did get to talk to her on the phone. Suffice to say, I am beyond grateful that I am gifted with this amazing woman as my mother. I could go on for hours and hours about how kind, caring, supportive, funny, generous, and all-around wonderful she is. I love you, Mom!

I did get to spend time with Allyn’s delightful mother Barbara on Mother’s Day. She is a firecracker, with so many hilarious and fun stories to share. She is also extremely enthusiastic and encouraging of my writing, which means so much to me. Plus she raised a pretty dang stupendous son who I love very much! 😉 She has welcomed me into the family with open arms. I was lucky to be invited to join Allyn, his mom and sister on their Mother’s Day tradition of going to the horse races! It was my first time ever going to the racetrack and it was a blast. The horses are gorgeous and I loved watching them run. We bet $2 on each race and I ended up winning a couple, so I walked out of there with $1.26 more than I walked in with! Woo hoo! Enough to pay for the $1 hot dog I ate for lunch, haha.

Allyn and I left the races a little early so I could head home to cook Mother’s Day dinner for my grandparents and extended family! I am the oldest grandchild and, as you know, not yet a mother, and I was thinking that if I didn’t volunteer to cook, one of my aunts or my grandma would likely end up hosting a Mother’s Day get-together for our family. I wanted them to be able to relax on their special day, so I stepped up to cook the meal. I made a chicken & bell peppers pasta dish and snickerdoodle cookies for dessert.

Everything turned out great, and it was so lovely for us all to spend time together. It made me especially happy to see my grandma so happy. She was all dressed up in this pretty new blouse my mom got her for Mother’s Day!

Now it’s time for this week’s simplicity…

Our last challenge was to journal about your beliefs — about yourself, your life, your relationships, your world — and reflect on what you wrote. Is something you believe about yourself holding you back? Is anything an old, worn-out belief that is no longer serving you? How about letting go of it?

In addition to my limiting belief of myself as someone who has trouble saying, “No” — that, after a conversation with my sweetheart and some reflection, I realized may not be true about me anymore — I also examined my idea of myself as “not a morning person.” I love the feeling of waking up early with the whole day in front of me, but I have always thought of myself as more naturally a night owl… I’m going to experiment with going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, and see how I like it!

This week’s challenge was inspired by Mother’s Day. It is such a wonderful and important holiday — with the intention of celebrating mothers and mother figures in our lives and thanking them for all they do and have done for us — but I think the true purpose of the day can easily get lost in hurry and stress. Everything is so busy that it is common to wait until the last minute, and then suddenly the day is upon us! We rush around getting cards and flowers and gifts, not focused on the meaning behind them as much as simply having SOMETHING to give.

But what if we approached things a little differently? Specifically, what if we gave ourselves more TIME? When you have a lot of time to do something, it is infinitely less stressful. You don’t even need to spend more time doing the actual thing; simply having more time before the deadline minimizes stress. Looking ahead on the calendar, many of us have graduations to attend in June, plus June 21 is Father’s Day. Your challenge for this week is to prepare for one or more of those upcoming events: brainstorm thoughtful gift ideas, buy cards, plan activities to celebrate. You could even write the cards and wrap the gifts in advance so you are all ready to go! If you have any birthdays coming up in the next couple months, you could plan for those, too. Also, remember you don’t always need to buy material gifts for people — a donation to a favorite charity or a day spent with you doing something fun are meaningful gifts that don’t add any STUFF to a person’s life!

At Greg’s undergraduate graduation, three years ago!

Questions for the day:

What limiting belief did you let go of?
What is one thing coming up that you can get a jump on starting today?

Happy Wednesday, my friends! This morning, I was woken up by a wild turkey gobble-gobble-squawking on the lawn outside my bedroom window. It was quite a unique alarm to wake up to and a funny sight to usher in my day. 🙂

Today is going by quickly thanks to a mix of writing, “housekeeping” business type stuff, errands, and a gym session where I tried out the elliptical for the first time in a long time. It was exciting to do some cardio again without pain! My PT is working, slowly but surely — I just have to keep being patient and doing my exercises.

Now it’s time for this week’s simplicity…

Last week’s challenge — inspired by Lauren Singer, a 23-year-old blogger living in NYC who hasn’t produced ANY waste in two-plus years — was to pay attention to how much waste you produce and try to produce less. I found that simply being attentive helped me produce less garbage. For example, I refrained from using paper towels whenever possible, and instead of grabbing a stack of paper napkins at Starbucks, I only took one. I made sure to recycle even small pieces of paper, like oatmeal packets, that can easily sneak into the garbage. I reused envelopes when mailing packages at the post office. Instead of using Ziplock baggies to pack my veggie snacks, I used reusable containers. {Purchasing glass containers is on my to-do-list!} I aim to continue being aware of and working to reduce my waste, and I have a goal of learning how to start a compost container, too, for food waste. My sweetheart composts and it was something I was attracted to about him from the very beginning — his care for small details to help the environment. #treehuggersmakemeswoon

This week’s challenge was inspired by a conversation I had with my sweetie earlier this week. We always call each other to say goodnight and talk about our days, and sometimes we wind up on these conversational tangents that are really fascinating and I feel like I learn so much more about him from our long meandering talks. Anyway, somehow we got on the topic of how we perceive ourselves, and he said something I wasn’t anticipating: that sometimes he is surprised by things I say about myself here, on my blog. For example, a few weeks ago when I posted about how I’m learning to say “No” to things and how I tend to say “Maybe” and hem and haw and dread until I eventually say “No” and feel like I’m letting the person down — Allyn said that he never had that view of me at all. He sees me as someone who is very intentional about how I spend my time and proactive about committing to the things that matter to me. Of course, he admitted, there are surely things in my daily life and routine and work obligations, etc. that he doesn’t know about, but still — it got me thinking.

And when I tried to come up with specific examples of things I have said “Yes” to lately that I really haven’t wanted to do, my list was pretty dang short. A lot of memories I have of that behavior are pretty far in the past, like back in my high school and college days. I realized that maybe, without realizing it, I’ve been holding onto a limiting belief about myself and haven’t given myself credit for learning and growing. Maybe I am a different person now — stronger, more self-aware, more intentional and proactive about my time and my commitments — than I used to be when I was afraid to say, “No.” Perhaps in this instance, there is more truth in the way that Allyn sees me, than in the way I see myself.

So this week’s challenge is to do some journaling about your beliefs: about yourself, your life, your relationships, your world. Be honest. Don’t write about what you “think” you should believe; write the story you tell yourself, deep down. Then reflect on what you’ve written. Is something you believe about yourself holding you back? Is anything an old, worn-out belief that is no longer serving you? How about letting go of it? If you are the type of person who likes ritual {as I do!} write your limiting belief or idea on a slip of paper and burn it to symbolize releasing it from your life.

Questions for the morning:

How did you reduce the waste you produce?
What is one limiting belief or idea that you could let go of today?

Day-By-Day Masterpiece

Tag Archives: belief

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