Living With Chaos: Use Your Gifts

Time to read: 43 seconds

Sticking with the charm bracelets cuz I love them so!

Welcome to week 7 of Living with Chaos. Invite your friends to join sign up here.

I promised I would share how to live, especially when it feels like things are falling apart.

The first step is to focus on your corner of the universe. You can't boil the ocean. Consider people like Paul Farmer, Martin Luther King, and Marie Curie. These are ordinary people, doing their work, pursuing things that matter to them, and using their gifts in the world.

I used famous examples to make the point. Most of us are never going to be world famous, and never underestimate your power. You can make a huge difference in your world by changing the stressed-out tone at work, volunteering your time and talent, cleaning up the stream near your house, or getting involved in a location organization. I could go on and on with ideas. It's easy to get bogged down in questions like "where to start?" or "it's all too much."

You know your world and who needs you. You know your gifts and how to bring them out. Go do that.

Remember, it's your life. Getting out there with your gifts is one great way to LIVE.

P.S. Email me here if you want a custom charm bracelet. I LOVE making them for people. They make great gifts!

Living With Chaos: This Is YOUR ONE LIFE

Time to read: 28 seconds

I love a charm bracelet! I made this one. :-)

Welcome to week 6 of Living with Chaos. Invite your friends to join here.

Today is going to get a little existential.

My husband gets this creepy daily message reminding him that he's going to die. We've also had a few friends die unexpectedly and way too soon. I bet you have, too.

Life is fragile. Let that fragility be a reminder to LIVE. This is your one life, and you get to craft it. Life is too short to be unfulfilled or bored. You don't have to change your job…just find the parts of it you love and focus on those. Do things you enjoy. Spend time with people you love (circling back to love again). Make the things you do and the ways you spend your time as pleasant as possible.

This doesn't mean being happy all the time (hello toxic positivity). It does mean in the midst of chaos, your life is still yours. Make your choices accordingly.

Next week, I'll share more strategies about how to do that.

P.S. Email me here if you want a custom charm bracelet. I LOVE making them for people. They make great gifts!

Living With Chaos: Love vs. Fear

Time to read: 50 seconds

Did your grandparents have these?

Welcome to week 5 of Living with Chaos. Invite your friends to join here.

For the past four weeks, we've established that you have agency, acceptance is key, and feeling your feelings helps you move through chaos.

Now that you have ownership and are back in power in your life, today's strategy is about a fundamental choice.

Choose love, not fear. Every.single.time. That means love for yourself. Love for others. Love for strangers, and people you don't understand.

Fear seems so easy. Love requires you to be vulnerable. To perhaps look foolish. To admit that you don't know everything. To step into the unknown. Love is a stance you take toward the world and other people.

Here's an example: You get laid off. Love yourself enough to feel your feelings. Love yourself enough to give yourself time. Be confident in your future, however murky it looks. Love life enough to believe that this layoff might end up being the best thing that ever happened to you. Open your eyes and love the world so new opportunities come to you.

Fear looks like clinging to one vision of your future. Wallowing in your house for weeks. Fighting the decision. Rushing to anything else.

Love might be hard in the short term. It is definitely easier in the long term. And a much healthier way to live with chaos.

Living With Chaos: Do This!

Time to read:

Cuz I love making them so much, here's another custom charm bracelet I made for a 10-year-old's birthday.

Welcome to week 4 of Living with Chaos. Anyone who wants practical advice for living with chaos can join here.

Remember week one…You Have No Control?

To find peace and live with chaos, you must accept it. Acceptance is not support, acquiesce, being a doormat, or powerlessness. In fact, acceptance is a powerful choice because it puts ownership back in your hands.

Here is another of my favorite sayings: Circumstances do not cause your suffering.Your resistance to your circumstances causes your suffering. Let me be clear. Losing your job is painful. A death is painful. Instability of any kind hurts. Getting cancer sucks.

The first step to having agency in situations like those is to accept them. When you resist reality, you give your power to the layoff, death, instability, or cancer. You want to pull your power back to you because you're gonna need it to feel your feelings, care for yourself, and make decisions.

Acceptance can hurt because often the things you have to accept are things you do not like. Buddhists say, "more pain, less suffering."

Check it out, we're circling back to feel your feelings. All these strategies are connected! (smily face)

Living With Chaos: The Touchy Feely Part

Time to read: 50 seconds

Custom charm bracelets!

Welcome to week 3 of Living with Chaos. If you are enjoying this series, please share it with your people. They can join here.

If you hate the f-word (feelings), keep reading. You need this.

Chaos breeds feelings. You get a new boss, you have feelings. Your child decides not to go to college, you have feelings. Your sister gets a scary test result, you have feelings.

The first strategy for living in chaos is to feel your feelings. This doesn't mean wallow forever or yell at other people. Feeling your emotions is for you, alone, to recognize and acknowledge your reaction to the chaos and how you feel.

Feelings are like weather. They move through 24/7. Sometimes emotions are sunny and warm and sometimes they are a thunderstorm. You are responsible to move your feelings through so they don't become stuck. If you don't, they come out sideways…flipping off someone in traffic or yelling at the barista, your child, or a co-worker. Then you have a mess to deal with which adds to the chaos.

So, take ownership of your feelings. Cry on the drive home. Take an evening to journal. Talk to a friend. Stomp around your basement. Do what works for you to allow your feelings to move through. That will help quiet the chaos.

Next week, another strategy for living with chaos.

Living With Chaos: You Have Agency

Time to read: 48 seconds. I timed it.

Welcome to week 2 of Living with Chaos. If you are enjoying this series, please share it with your people. They can join here.

The second part of the You Have No Control lecture is that you have agency, ownership and responsibility. For everything. Your health, relationships, career, attitude, feelings, choices. It looks like this:

• You don't control if your teen does her homework. You have agency over how you relate to your teen.
• You control aging (yours or someone else's). You have responsibility for how you care for yourself and your attitude as you age.
• You don't have control over a layoff. You have ownership over how you respond and what you do next.

So how does this relate to chaos? There is so much about national politics, your career, your family etc that you don't control. However, you have all the agency to decide what you will and won't do, how you speak to others, and the ways you do or don't give power to the chaos of human life.

For the next 3 weeks, I'll share one strategy a week for dealing with chaos. More to come!

Living With Chaos: Good News! You Have No Control

Time to read: 36 seconds

It's awesome vintage!

Welcome to week 1 of Living with Chaos. I'm going to keep this multi-week series brief, to the point, and immediately useful. Your life is full (cue the chaos) so I want the return-on-investment of your time to read this newsletter to be high. Please share it with your friends and family and anyone who experiences chaos and wants to thrive. They can join here.

And now we begin.

Anyone who comes within 2 feet of me gets this lecture.

You Have No Control.

None. Nada. Nope. No Control. Is that clear?

Consider this: aging, getting sick, people you love getting sick, death, layoffs, who your children turn out to be, the weather, other people's behavior, etc etc etc. Despite your best efforts, you have zero control over these things.

This is great news! Once you really get that you have no control, you are free! The weight comes off your shoulder. You can stop trying to force outcomes or make people respond the way you want. You save so much effort and energy to use for things that are actually fun.

Next week, I'll tell you what you do have. Stay tuned.

If you love this newsletter, please share it with your colleagues. They can sign up here.