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?
Day-By-Day Masterpiece 