Category: INSPIRATION

The Muchness has found me… and it’s different.

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When I gave my TedX talk nearly 18 months ago, there was something about something that I said and the questions it elicited that struck me enough that it’s sat with me all this time, and finally has a solution, of sorts.

I said in my 5-minute talk, (which you can watch a poorly done iphone recording of here,) that I lost my Muchness slowly, over many years. The loss of my twins was just the final straw that stole it completely.

The straw before the final straw was waking up one day and realizing I was a mom and a housewife living on a dead-end street  in New Jersey.

After my talk, people came up to me and asked if I was still married to my husband, and if I still lived on that dead-end street, and I said yes, but I’d learned to live with it and was happy.

And I was happy. I’d created a rich, online community that fed my creative needs, I’d registered my kids in a school i’d selected in large part because I believed I’d find friends there as well, and I did, and I was no longer commuting to the blood sucking day job that had been causing my panic attacks. My home was beautiful, a creative muchness sanctuary filled with bright colors, light and positive energy.

And that sustained me… for a while.

This past year I’ve done very little to expand and explode the Muchness Movement. I simply couldn’t. Launching Earseeds and building that foundation for our family had to come first, and I’ve loved doing it.

But in so many ways it left me feeling isolated.

No time to truly connect with my “people” in my online communities.

No time to devote to sharing my own light and Muchness and inspiring others.

No time to get out and spend real human time with the friends I made in my community.

And I woke up one day, trapped in the house by the shitty weather and realized I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was not created to live and die isolated in house on a dead-end street in New Jersey.

That’s how it felt, and that was not my fate.

So here we are in San Diego.

It’s nice. Really nice.

I’m feeling motivated, organized and strong.

After three weeks without our moving truck we finally got it and started to settle in. Honestly, Earseeds comes first. It is our livelihood… but I feel like here, I’ll be able to breathe some life back into this Muchness passion project.

I said in a recent post that if you follow your Muchness you never know where it will take you and I am living proof of that. I’m following. The thing is, you have to be willing to go. Are you? If the answer is yes than surrender to it. It is so hard. grief, fear, boredom, laziness, and plain old self-sabotage will pop in with a fierce desire to hold you back. And they will. Perhaps because those things have a clear goal. That goal is to stop you. to get you into a place of NOT DOING. And that’s it, you land at point zero. Everything opposite that: love, joy, accomplishment, beauty, muchness…. they are infinite, which means they have to ultimate clear end-goal, which makes them that much more elusive and harder to chase… because you’re always chasing.

Don’t settle for point zero. You deserve the journey that comes with the chase.

It’s all a matter of perspective

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I’ve been wasting a lot of time playing this game app called Flow. The point of the game is to create paths between the same letters and fill every square of the grid with paths.
So you start with this:

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And end up with this:

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I like it because it fulfills the OCD desire I have to fill in spaces and organize small areas. My four year old also likes it, and is surprisingly good at it.
As you do better and better the grid gets smaller and more letters are added.
You start to get the hang of it, the rhythm of where the paths “want” to go… Wrapping around the edges, taking the long way around the other letters.
It feels good when you can see that the “obvious” path isn’t actually the correct path, and taking an unexpected turn will get you where you wanna go.
And with each puzzle completed I get a teeny tiny feeling of “yes! I can figure shit out- either in this silly game or in the game of life or business.”
And I know this analogy sorta sounds like a reach but it’s true- I totally get that feeling.
But then, every so often, I’ll get stumped. I’ll get a board that seems obvious, or even not so obvious, and yet I can’t figure it out. Here’s one of those boards:

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It shouldn’t have been so complicated, yet every time I did it I ended up here:

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Or some place similar.
Was driving me batty.
I know the answer is possible- I know it’s staring me I the face, but I can’t see it.
So I put the phone down and come back to it later.
But inevitably, I still can’t get it.
And then I remember the trick that always works.
I turn the phone upside down, squint my eyes so the backwards letters (aka:the details) don’t confuse me from the larger task at hand, and almost immediately I’m able to solve the puzzle.

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Ta-da!!

I don’t know why each time this happens it takes me a while to remember this trick- that it basically always works- but that just seems to be the way I learn. Slowly.

Just like the game feels like a very elementary analogy for life, this always reminds my that sometimes you just have to step back, take a bathroom break, and come at life’s challenges from a new perspective. While squinting. And confident the answer is there, just waiting to be seen.

Just to note: you can’t advance to higher levels without passing each board. If you wanna keep playing you just keep redoing the same boards you already did time and time before. Which sometimes is good, but not really the way to keep yourself truly interested in the game.
… Am I taking this too far? Well, whatever. Take from it what you will.

Finding My Grit

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A few days ago I read an article entitled “7 Habits of People With Remarkable Mental Toughness” and though I’m not the most well-read individual, the list itself reminded me a lot of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People— a book which I only read the mini version of– and none of which I could accurately list for you offhand, but still feel like the same list in my “let’s boil everything down to it’s lowest common denominator” mind. Plus, the author basically states that that’s what it is.

But there is one thing about that article that keeps popping back into my brain…. the authors use of the word “grit.” Defined as “The ability to work hard and respond resiliently to failure and adversity; the inner quality that enables individuals to work hard and stick to their long-term passions and goals.”

Image via Seth Mattison

So, when I first heard the word “Muchness” I knew that that was the word for that thing I’d been missing….  and that word “grit”- that almost felt like the same thing – I feel like I’ve lost my grit. I grew up in Brooklyn. People in Brooklyn have grit. In spades. It’s basically a pre-requisite. Scratch that- it was a pre-requsite in the 70’s and 80’s. Now, it seems like hipster faux-grit might be the pre-requisite, but alas, I now live in Jersey so nobody cares what I think about Brooklyn grit.

Anyhooo, this idea of grit stuck with me.

I’m trying to be nice to myself, to follow my own lessons and not beat myself up about having to relearn things that I already know. But the fact is, over the last 5 years I’ve been completely disassembled and I’m reassembling as I go. And I imagine I will continue to do so for, well, ever.

When I first learned that we were not going to be bringing our twins home safe and sound, I approached it with grit. I looked at it with the mindset of someone with resiliency. In that way, I was intent to stick to my plan and get pregnant again and have the baby that I’d wanted. I was going to “bounce back”…. because that’s what people like me did. It’s who I saw myself  as….a person with “grit.”

And then I learned it wasn’t gonna work that way. I learned that even though I did get pregnant quickly, that didn;t fix anything. I learned I needed to break, I couldn’t just plow through.

And I eventually learned to be OK with that. And I still am. It taught me powerful lessons. It was a giant gift.

But simultaneously, it also gave me permission to drop my grit. My former boss saw it. I was no longer badass. I got soft. And I knew it. And I liked it. And I needed it. Because the things I was badass about were no longer important. Not in scheme of life. A life viewed from the perspective of a woman who’d just said goodbye to her babies.

But here I am- I want my grit back. I’ve been aching for it for a while, without a good word for it. History has shown I do well when I have a word for that ‘thing’ that is often indescribable.  And I’m trying to learn what grit can look like redesigned, reintroduced with all the lessons of grief staying close to my heart.

Before grit looked like not necessarily letting emotions seep in. Now, emotions always seep in. And they should.

Before, grit looked like putting myself first. Now, I find that harder to do with empathy so woven into my consciousness.

Before, grit also ironically meant putting myself last. When you just push push push you forget you need some TLC. Now, I handle myself with kid gloves, and I’m a little sick of it.

Before, grit looked like judging others as a means to help define myself. Now, I know judging others only serves to minimize me and my own ability to shine.

I’m starting to feel confident it’ll find it’s way back, in the right way, with the right balance.

Perhaps I should give myself a 30 Days of Grit Challenge? I wonder what that would even look like…. 30 days with no complaining? 30 days of cursing like a NY truckdriver? (that always makes me feel badass.) 30 days of working hard and sticking to my long term passions and goals?

30 Days of Grit.

Maybe I will.

 

Ramblings about nothing that might mean something to someone. Maybe.

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It’s been a summer of change around here. Not the kind of change that whacks you over the head and drags you off to a new life but the kind that subtly seeps in, pushes and pulls and tugs at your insides for a while, leaving you to wonder if you’re losing your mind. Insecurity seeps in. Clarity seeps out. Moments of overwhelm come fast and furious and you wonder how you ever thought you had a grip on anything solid in the first place.

And then, one day, you wake up and it’s different. The shift has occurred. You remember you can chose your perspective aand the perspective you chose actually feels right. And honest.

I’ve spent the last 10+ weeks running my first ever Finding Your Muchness After Babyloss online program. Together with psychologist Julie Bindeman and 12 incredible women, I found myself engrossed emotionally in these journeys.

I thought the journeys would belong to the women in the course. I planned to accomplish a whole host of other things while the course was in progress, but then, I accomplished almost none of them. For months I told myself I was lazy. Unfocussed, overwhelmed… all nonsense, I’m now giving myself permission to admit. That course had me on an emotional journey as well and my lack of engagement in too much else was just my way of honoring that journey. Geez. Not so complicated in retrospect but last week it sure had my feathers in a pinch.

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Anyhoooo,  I was so caught in a dysfunctional headspace and poor perspective that I told my husband I need medication to manage my self-diagnosed and never tested nor treated ADD. I even went to a shrink and asked her to give me some pills. She told me I had to have therapy first. So I went. Twice. And what I walked away with was a reminder to get off my ass do the shit that needs to get done. And also, that blogging is great therapy. It got me through the worst time of my life. – Well, that’s not 1000% true. I didn’t blog right after the loss, nor in the depths of my grief. At those times I just spent every waking minute in online chat rooms for loss moms, learning how to feel.

But then after that I blogged. And lord, when I’m doing that on a  regular basis- it might be better than therapy…. though it might also create a need for therapy… but only when I overthink. And worry about what people are thinking of my writing. Man, that’s such a major buzz-kill.

A few years back I took an online business course and the first thing it pounded into our heads was to get inside the heads of our readers. There was a 15 page assignment designed to help us get into the heads of our readers. And I attempted to do it- I did…. many times, but I could never finish it. And the more I tried to get into the head of my reader, the more outside my own head I felt. The more I started writing for other people- Imaginary people I was supposed to be creating – instead of for myself and the actual people who seemed to be reading my ramblings even when they made no real sense and had no ALL IMPORTANT CALL TO ACTION!!! (The golden goose of online business, in case your wondering…. You must ALWAYS have a CALL TO ACTION…. see yours at the bottom of this post…. if you make it that far…. I know… I’m rambling….)

Last week I went to a little group blog-planning session and with 8 other women we talked about blog subjects and how our blogs can help us build our businesses and after listening to me explain my blogging conundrum (who am I blogging for? Who is my reader? blah blah blah….) the group basically set me straight. They said “You blog about Muchness. Your Muchness. Other people’s muchness. Just go with that. And have fun”

This Blog Posts OFFICIAL CALL TO ACTION:

Please, comment below and let all 6 readers of this blog know how you proactively switch gears to get out of a bad cycle of self-doubt, overwhelm or overthinking.

You can fly to the moon on your talents too.

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“Why do you think you’re qualified to ‘teach’ people how to grieve? A lot of people have gone through loss. What makes you think you have anything special to share?”

Many years ago, when I first shared with my mom that I felt called to help women find their way through grief… with sequins… that was her response.

My mom, my entire life, told me that I could do ANYTHING I set my mind to. She told me I could fly to the moon on my talents. She told me I could start and run a business that would make bajjilions. She is the one who encouraged me to start my own handbag business at the tender age of 21. And she told me top think BIG! “It takes just as much effort to make 10 bags as it does to make 10,000” she’d say, completely overlooking the fact that it takes a lot more effort to SELL 10,000 bags.

But that was fine- because with her (not so) blind optimism and encouragement, I believed whole-heartedly that I could absolutely do it.

When I was a teenager and painted disturbing horror-ish characters, life-sized, crawling out of graves on my bedroom wall, she brought her friends up to my room to brag about my talents.

And it wasn’t only me. When my older sister – the book-smart brainy one- was thinking about going to nursing school, my mom said HELL NO. You are going to medical school. And she did. A really prestigious one. On a full scholarship where she received her MD. and her Ph.D. Now she is a pediatric cardiologist who helps fix babies hearts.

So when my mom, for the first time in my life, questioned my ability to do what I felt I was being drawn to do, it stopped me in my tracks. It made me question myself and what the hell I thought I was doing with this Muchness thing.

Sure, if it was just about creativity and clothes, I was more than qualified, but maybe if it was about the deeper stuff, the stuff that sits in darker places, I wasn’t exactly equipped for the job. It derailed me from this goal for over a year.

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But another thing she taught me is that if I’m meant to do something, I will.

I met Dr. Julie, and together we’ve been creating this Muchness After Babyloss 8-week program. Because now, the time is right.

To kick off the launch, we created a 7 day  mini-challenge, to help loss moms get to know us and what we stand for. That program is now in progress.

The feedback, response, is incredible.

Being witness to the opening up among the 650+ participants is so reaffirming.

Comments from participants like these amaze me:

“I feel like this is helping to get me unstuck. My therapy sessions do not seem to be as productive the last 6 months as you have been in three days.”

“The challenges have been tough, but yesterday, for a brief moment, I felt more like myself than I had since my first miscarriage.”

“This challenge/group has made it easier to get out of bed today. Thank you for this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“This program is already helping me tremendously! I was leery at first. Thanks for all the love”

…they make me know I am on the right path. And my mom was right. I can fly to the moon on my talents… I just didn’t even know till now what some of those talents are. I too am discovering my Muchness, more and more every day.

If you are feeling called to go deeper into your healing journey after loss, we (Dr. Julie and I) hope you’ll consider Muchness After Babyloss.

There is light and life and joy and purpose after loss. We want to help you find it.

We are hosting a free confrence call this evening where you will get to hear from myself and Dr. Julie and ask any questions you may have about the 7 day free challenge or the 8 week course which starts May 18.

Want to find out more? Comment below or register to get call information emailed to you.

My kid gave money to the homeless dude.

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On Sunday we drove into Manhattan to meet my dad and stepmom for dinner. We were a bit early and our little one fell asleep in the car, so after finding a parking spot we sat in the car and waited for her to wake up or for it to get later, whichever happened first.

Sitting on the corner near our car was a homeless man.Like a cliché, with his blanket and cardboard sign, I didn’t notice him. he looked a lot like this guy:

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I grew up in and around NYC. It would be fair to say, for the most part, that the homeless are invisible to me. I know that sounds cruel, but much like the fire hydrants and bus stops, unless I am looking for one, I tend not to notice.

Molly, my 5 year old noticed though.

“Mommy, what is he doing?” she asked.

Oy.

When my kids ask a question, I tend to tell them the truth.

“He doesn’t have any money sweetie. He doesn’t have a home to live in or a job to make money, so he’s sitting there.”

I looked at her as her eyes grew wide. I asked her how that made her feel. She said sad. Then she asked for my phone to play Subway Surfers.

I promptly put the homeless guy out of my mind.

10 minutes later we were getting out of the car and she gave me my phone and pulled me close. She whispered in my ear “Mommy, can we give him some money?”

Oh. Um, ok. I felt a little swell of pride at her thoughtfulness. I  guess while her fingers were busy surfing subways her mind was busy processing the concept of homelessness.

I pulled out a quarter from my pocket and handed it to her. Molly, despite being a powerhouse of passion, is really shy. She’s the hide-behind-my-leg kinda shy and the whisper-her-name-into-her-shoulder-when-meeting-a-new-person kinda shy.

We walked together to the man and she reached out and dropped the quarter into his cup. He looked her straight in the face and said “Thank you.” She looked right back at him and replied, clear, confident and sincerely, “You’re welcome.” and then I ushered her away with all the logic of a mom whose 5 year old daughter just gave a homeless man a quarter on a NYC street corner.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know what it was that hit me in the gut. The way he said Thank you and the way she looked at him, with humanity and kindness. In part, I was almost jealous of that full-heartedness. I told Elie, proud of how thoughtful she was, and he pointed out that that’s also why kids are trusting and, unless taught not to, will somewhere with a stranger. True.

I began thinking back to my own childhood and interactions with homeless people. I remember, in the 80’s, driving by tent villages that popped up on empty lots that probably house million dollar apartments today. I remember because I was fascinated by their architecture- walls made of shopping carts and tee-pees built from blankets and poles, stuff like that.

And I remember the time a young guy came up to my dad and asked for $20 to take a bus back home to wherever the heck he was from. He promised my dad when he got there he’d put $20 in the mail and repay him. My dad turned to me and asked if I thought he should give it to him. I was about 9, and I said yes.  My dad gave him his address (who is the brilliant one in this scenario) + $20 and sent him on his way. He then asked me if I thought he’d get his money back and I said yes. He said he didn’t think so, and his distrust made me mad.

About a month later he asked me if I remembered the guy and if I thought he had gotten the $20 in the mail. In my head I was like “Told ya so!” and said yes. He told me no. He told me he was probably never going to get the money back and I remember thinking “Maybe he will! Ya never know!” but he told me people who ask for money on the street generally are also gonna be liars.

I guess the fact that almost 30 years later I still remember this means it impacted me on a deep level. Yet 30 years later I’m still not quite sure what there is to be learned from the story, other than that I am really gullible, and while I don’t want to crush my own daughters spirit and belief in the goodness of people, well, yeah. You know.

Just a few weeks ago I was in Port Authority and a guy walked up to me and said he needed a dollar for the bus to get home. I looked at his face and then looked away, shaking my head no and walking faster towards my gate. As he walked behind me I heard him mutter under his breath “racist” which kinda hurt my feelings,  since I didn’t even notice the color of his skin. In fact, the only reason I didn’t give him a dollar is ‘cuz I recognized him as the same guy I gave a dollar to a month earlier to catch his bus home. :-/

Do you give money to homeless people? Would you have let your kid do that? Would love to hear your thoughts. 🙂

Just for an hour- PLEASE make it STOP!!!

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I wanted to share with you an idea that I heard falling out of my mouth during my interview with Abigail Eaton-Masters for the Bounce Back Queen Summit.

It went a little something like this:
Somewhere in the last few years the world has become obsessed with this idea of fear. We are all living our lives surrounded by a healthy dose of fear. Fear of what might go wrong, fear of what might go right, fear that we don’t know enough or that we will say or do something to look stupid, fear of being judged, fear of our fear, of not being aware of the havoc it is bringing to our lives, of being too aware of the havoc it is bringing to our lives….  it never ends.

When I lost my Muchness a HUGE part of that involved taking on a ton of fear. And when I lost my girls, that just magnified all of those fears, and added a dollop of new ones.

But ya know what, I’m sick of it. 
There was a time when I was NOT ruled by fear. Fear was just a thing that popped up here and there, stuck around for a few minutes, barely getting any attention, and then crawled back into it’s little hole so I could go about the business of living my life. 

Sometimes I think that by giving our fear all of this attention- coming to terms with it, analyzing it, sometimes even naming it, all we’re doing is inviting it to come out of it’s hole, put up it’s feet and stay a while. 

So here’s what I think. Just for a day. Tell your fear to take a hike. Seriously. Just send it on a vacation, into it’s little hole, and ignore it. 

Just for a day.

And if a day is too hard, start with an hour.

And while it’s out of the way, do something it wouldn’t want you to do. Like go for a drive and get lost. Chop your hair off. Write an email to someone who intimidates you. Or just paint your nails purple. Neon purple.

That’s it. That’s all I gotta say about that.

Let me know how that goes for you. 😉

xox, Tova

Are you ready to say what you REALLY want

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I’ve talked before about my handbag business that I ran throughout my 20’s. It has been my dream since 6th grade to be in the fashion world and have my own business. In high school I worked flipping burgers to pay for one thing: My long distance phone bill to talk to my friends in NY after we moved to Jersey. Everything else I earned went into an envelope in my underwear drawer to go towards eventually starting my own business. And  that biz was gonna be FANTASTIC. Seriously. The world was gonna stand up and take notice with this petite little girl with the big mouth had something to say. Oh- and they were gonna LOVE my products. No doubts. The end.

I was gonna be a superstar.

And then, I graduated college and realized the world was not necessarily waiting on the edge of their seats to see what I did next. But that was OK. I’d keep at it and they’d take notice. I started making pants for people. And belt buckles… and all types of etsy style one-offs that I was sure people would want, want, want.

And they did. And then I started making bags. But I wasn’t making them t home. I was making them in factories, in NY, and after that, in China, and I was selling them around the WORLD.

And seriously, this is before people were actually buying stuff online and shipping to individuals. I was selling into stores. Lots of them.

And yet, somehow, despite so many accomplishments, my Muchness kept dwindling. I allowed myself to be more disappointed by the failures than excited by the accomplishments. i focussed on my flaws, my weaknesses, and the fact that despite selling so many bags I never knew how much money I was making nor did I ever seem to have any.

I started that business with grandiose dreams of fun, a fame, and fortune and despite being proud of my product, I ended up broke and miserable with my self-esteem in the toilet.

I remember a conversation I had with a guy I was dating. I had an idea for a new way to market my bags. Se,, my bags very very clever- they did things, like change color, change shape, they were ergonomically designed…. basically, they were awesome. The problem was that when I went to trade shows and was able to explain how they worked, buyers fell in love with them. When those same bags sat on the shelf in retail stores without yours truly there to explain their hidden magic, they just sat. I told him my idea- and it was grandiose- I envisioned a display with my brands name on it that stores would put into their retail space that helped people understand my bags. I’d create cute little videos showing how the bags worked and the video would play on a loop in the store and consumers would see the magic in the bags.

I knew it was a crazy big, expensive, basically impossible idea, but thinking about it excited me none-the less. So I told my then boyfriend about this crazy-pants idea and you know what he said?

Not “Wow- that’s a big idea- do you really think you can pull that off?”

Not “Wow, that sounds really expensive… how on earth do you think you can make it happen?”

Not “That’s absurd Tova, it’ll never happen. Welcome to reality.”

Not even “That idea sucks. What’s for dinner?”

He said, with (to my ears) judgement with a twist of disgust “So you want to put videos of yourself in these stores… really all you want is to be famous. You’re like a little kid who thinks she can be famous.  You want everyone to know who you are.”

And I said “NO! I want people to understand how to use the bags!!”

And we got into an argument and hung up the phone and I remember thinking “Did I really just want to be famous? And if I did, was that so bad? Was it childish and naive? Selfish and lame? Or, did I really just want to figure out how to get people to understand how to use my bags? (YouTube didn’t exist in those days, FYI)

The truth is, part of me did want to be famous. I loved what I did, I felt I was really good at it, I worked my ass off, and I loved sharing it with people. Yes, I DID want my handbags to ultimately become a household name.

But after years of slowly losing my confidence, I could no longer  admit it.

It was that conversation that ultimately bookmarked on my brain as the moment I minimized my dreams. If I couldn’t even admit to myself what I wanted to achieve and who I wanted to be in the world, how could I ever accomplish it?

I couldn’t.

So I forfeited my business, gave up on my dream and went and got a job. (I also went and got an new boyfriend…)

Whether your dream is to become a famous superstar, write a book, or even just become president of the PTA- the first- and MOST IMPORTANT step in the journey is ADMITTING what you want.

First to yourself, and then out loud.

There is no shame, no fear, no absurdity around saying it out loud. Even if it feels scary and absurd. It’s also not like you are gonna be a “failure” if you say it out loud but then don’t accomplish, or even pursue it.

The only way you fail is you make the choice NOT to lean into your desires by cutting them off before they can even fully exist.

So do it. Right here, right now.

Tell me what you would dream about being or doing if you hadn’t, somewhere along the line, been taught to stop dreaming about who you could be or what you could do.

Push yourself towards your most outer skin…

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Push yourself towards your most outer skin… Do you even know what that means? I don’t, yet I just wrote to someone that that is a 2014 goal I set for myself.

I just couldn’t come up with other words to describe it.

Since most of us only know each other online, let me fill you in on a little secret. I talk with my hands. I know. A New Yorker who talks with their hands. What’re the chances? But truthfully, I REALLY talk with my hands. As a kid this often meant getting excited while speaking and accidentally knocking something out of the hands of the stranger standing within arms reach. (Who am I kidding, this still happens as an adult.)

And when I was working as an art director in the fashion industry, I’d often give direction by illustrating the feeling I wanted a product to have by moving my hands, arms, shoulders and whole upper body (Sometimes legs too— if I really wanted it to kick butt) in a way that spoke the words my mouth couldn’t find…. though it tried….. (My best artists and assistants understood what I meant when I sometimes just used sounds— “that’s too arggg,” I’d say while making some pycho looking motion with my hands. “I get it” she’d say and boom- she’d get it. God, I miss having assistants…)  I’ve also been accused of speaking to people like they are 4 years old, repeating the same thing 3 times just using different words to say it. That’s just the way I process…. especially when I’m on the phone and the other person can’t see my less than gracious but very expressive body motions.

I am totally off track here. 

As I mentioned, I didn’t set New Years resolutions. They just feel like a recipe for disaster. You create a platform of routine and then the minute you slip up, you fall right on down that slippery slope. It’s been the same way since second grade when I made a resolution to always do my homework and have a sharpened pencil in my backpack. As my most frightening teacher of all time, Morah Golumbeck can attest to- I didn’t, in fact, follow through on that resolution.

But, as the second week of 2014 rolls in I’ve been thinking about day-to-day choices I need to make in order to get where I want to go and feel the way I want to feel…. and frankly, I want to get to some crazy-ass places and feel like a bad-ass Muchness machine.

Those are big wants.

And they are not going to happen if I allow the parts of me that are shy, insecure or afraid to fold me up into a protective shell and let myself play small. I need to hold my arms back like a clichéd woman in a commercial for some pharmaceutical drug with horrible side effects, and instead of just taking in the beauty of nature that surrounds me in a field of daisies, I need to push my own light out from my core towards my outer most skin and beyond.

This entire post was written with me stopping every few words to hold my hands in front of me and then extend them, trying to find the words to really describe what I’m trying to convey. Is it working?

So this year, my wish for youand for myself is that you are able to reach in to your core and find all the muchy goodness that resides there, and then make choices that help you pull that towards your outermost skin so other’s can see it too.

It’s exactly that which you are put on this planet to share.

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Isn’t she lovely?

Pushing yourself means not hiding from what you really want, so lets start here. How are YOU gonna push yourself to your outermost skin this year and pull your Muchness to the surface? Inquiring minds wanna know!