You can spend a lifetime looking back at the past – contemplating, wishing, dreading, reliving – but the fact of the matter is those moments have passed. They are gone. What’s leftover are just the movie reels from those moments in time. And you can play them again and again. The good. The bad. The dark. With eyes of judgement we dig ourselves even deeper into those moments and the ripple effects they have had on our lives. With understanding we can find wisdom and compassion in the same moments that have challenged you down to your core. But you have to come back. This is all you’ve got. What’s right here. What happened doesn’t matter anymore. It has been written. For better or…
finding the light
Posts by thebettermanprojects
“Tell me about this plant here.” I looked at my teacher confused. I had no idea what this had to do with anything or how it was going to help me fix my problems. But…I played along.
Failing hurts. Putting your heart into something and it not working out can be brutal. But like with all things, if you take time to really sit and learn from the experience, you’re going to grow.Losing at something can become one of your greatest teachers if you let it. You can learn things about yourself and life that you just can’t learn from winning. Of course you’re not aiming to fail. But knowing that it’s going to happen (and that it happens to everyone) is a huge part of moving forward. While the events that took place can be difficult to deal with on their own, the real focus has to be on your interpretation of those events. The stories you tell yourself about…
Roald Dahl once said, “I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good.”As I’ve been thinking about this, I also recognize just how important it is that we take that same intensity about life and turn it towards deeply loving ourselves.Each of us are on a journey to discover who we truly are down to our core. There are a million distractions, diversions and pitfalls on the path that can throw us into a multitude of different situations.Some will cast you off your…
We are all capable of extraordinary things. We all come into this world with talents, skills and dreams and part of our journey is about discovering how to create what we have envisioned. As we grow up, we are definitely challenged by life and sometimes we lose faith in ourselves due to failures, tragedies and everything else life throws at us. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. I’m here to help you turn that all around and give you some amazing no-nonsense strategies and tactics that will help you finally achieve your goals. It’s not going to be complicated – in fact, we want our goals to be anything but complicated. But this guide will be rooted in battle-tested…
In order to make things better, you first have to stop making them worse. It’s like floating around in a boat that has holes in it. While you may be successfully bailing out water, there’s always more water coming in. The goal isn’t to bail out water faster. It’s stopping everything, taking a moment to plug up the holes, bailing out the water remaining and continuing onward. Accepting that reality is crucial. But why is it so hard at times in our day to day lives to truly embrace that? Maybe it comes down to having difficulties in identifying what the holes are in the first place (because the boat is just a analogy)? Or, and this is something I’ve experienced many different times,…
I’ve been searching for context. As I’ve been navigating through the land of a thousand tomorrows, it was pretty easy to begin to look at everything that’s taken place with eyes of judgement. Heading down the path of breaking myself down, especially after everything that’s happened this past year, has been pretty easy. The Critic has been vicious at times. But even in all of that, I don’t know where I would be if I had just given up or even continued down the path I was on. Both of those options would have been disastrous. Even if I wasn’t ready to take on what I needed to, there’s a strange feeling in arriving to a place that you know will change the foundations…
This year was many things. Of course, nothing, and I mean nothing, happened the way I thought it was going to. I mean I don’t think anyone could have predicted what was going to go down. And while we are still in it, it seems like we are closer to the end of it all than the beginning. My foundations were stress-tested this year in ways that I never really knew were possible. Some areas I grew. Some areas I retracted. But all in all, I am still here standing strong and that’s what really matters in the end. The word “grace” kept on showing up over and over this year. While not all of it was “graceful” I think for the first time…
Life in its endless twists and turns brought you to this place – one that is uniquely fitted to who you are – with an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and to right so many wrongs that still call within your soul.There are things that happen in life that you would never ask for. You didn’t manifest them. You didn’t claim them for yourself. They came in out of nowhere and impacted your life on so many levels.And yet begin to understand the value that those moments bring. Even through the darkest of nights you can learn compassion, understanding, wisdom, trust and so many other valuable things.The price is heavy, but it’s worth it.But it goes beyond the experiences you have. Somewhere, deep…
Every step you’ve ever taken, the tragedies and victories you’ve experienced, the mistakes, the wins and losses, the courageous moves and wanderings through the unknown, have all brought you here.Here being this moment, as your eyes hit these words. Present. Pure. A endless amount of possibility. And in this brief moment we have together, I want you to remember something you’ve always known but at some point may have forgotten.What you’ve been seeking for so long is not out “there” in the world. It inside of you. You’ve been searching for something you’ve already had. That’s why you could never find it. You’ve been looking for your keys and they have been in your pocket the entire time. And you’ll hear many say that…
