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May 31, 2011 By 47 Comments

My Blog Transformed My Life

Today I have a spe­cial guest with us — Live Lane, from Choos­ing Beauty.  Below, Liv shares a part of her blog jour­ney, and how deeply good that has been for her.  As well, both Liv and I sat down recently to talk about this, and to dis­cuss her upcom­ing “How To Build A Blog You Truly Love” e-course.

The story Liv shares below very much touches upon choos­ing beauty, and how we can all choose to see that in our daily lives.

For those of you who are blog­gers, in the video Liv and I dig a bit more into her upcom­ing e-course, How To Build A Blog You Truly Love.  We both came into this video as video non-experts (yikes!) and there were a cou­ple of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties which cut off the last few sec­onds of the video (in which Liv so gra­ciously thanked me for our time) (and thank you, also, Liv!).

 

My Blog Trans­formed My Life

 

I know it sounds over-the-top, but it’s totally true: my blog trans­formed my life.
 
Before I tell you how, I need to rewind to the day my first son was born in early 2003. I had entered the hos­pi­tal happy and excited, my usual chip­per self. But sev­eral days later, I left the hos­pi­tal a changed woman – sob­bing all the way home. The birth expe­ri­ence had been hor­ri­ble, with one com­pli­ca­tion after another. I was phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally exhausted by the time my baby arrived – blue and barely breath­ing, with his heart on the wrong side of his body and his lung col­lapsed. Mirac­u­lously, he recov­ered in the NICU and is now a healthy, high-energy eight-year-old. But as he got bet­ter, I got worse.
 
I cried a lot. I couldn’t sleep.  I became mas­ter­ful at small talk because I couldn’t han­dle any­thing deeper. I hid my pain really well – at least for a while. My fam­ily even­tu­ally urged me to seek help in late 2005. I was diag­nosed with depres­sion and post trau­matic stress dis­or­der, both the result of “birth trauma” – some­thing I’d never even heard of.  My ther­a­pist, Jeanne, promised me I could heal and that the dark­ness I was liv­ing in could be lifted. It seemed impos­si­ble. But I decided to believe her and jumped into my heal­ing jour­ney. I was will­ing to try any­thing: talk ther­apy, psy­chother­apy, med­ica­tion, med­i­ta­tion, hyp­no­sis, and more. Even­tu­ally, I began to see glim­mers of light. Slowly but surely, I re-discovered the real me.

One day after a ses­sion with Jeanne, a bril­liant rain­bow arched over the inter­sec­tion where I was sit­ting in my car. I looked at the dri­vers around me; they were all too busy putting on lip­stick, talk­ing on the phone or star­ing blankly at the stop­light to look up and notice the stun­ning rain­bow over­head. I won­dered in that moment how many other lit­tle mir­a­cles I’d missed by being too dis­tracted or too depressed. I wanted to take a pic­ture of the rain­bow, just to show oth­ers what I’d seen {remem­ber, our cell phones didn’t have cam­eras back then!}.

My birth­day was only days away and I decided it was the per­fect time to ini­ti­ate a per­sonal exer­cise: take a pic­ture of some­thing beau­ti­ful each day for a year and write about it. I sus­pected it could con­tribute to my heal­ing and cre­ated a very basic blog – a type of web site I’d only just learned about.  I called it One Year of Beauty.

Within weeks of start­ing, I was hear­ing from read­ers around the world who were inspired to find beauty in their every­day lives, too. They kept me account­able; had it not been for those early read­ers cheer­ing me on, I prob­a­bly would have quit on the days it felt impos­si­ble to find beauty. In the end, those turned out to be the most trans­for­ma­tional days. Find­ing some­thing good on a “bad” day was a rush. I was so glad I’d cho­sen to write some­thing about each photo I posted because it forced me to really reflect and prac­tice grat­i­tude. What was so beau­ti­ful about a fallen leaf? Why did the sight of my child’s paint-covered hands make my heart skip a beat? How did I feel stand­ing under a bright blue sky?

Over time, one beauty sight­ing a day mul­ti­plied into many. Though I con­tin­ued to fea­ture just one on the blog each day, I began to notice beauty every­where I went – even in the midst of chaos. My ther­a­pist was floored by the changes in me. I would waltz into Jeanne’s office more eager to tell her about all the good things around me than the fear or sad­ness that occa­sion­ally {instead of always} reared its ugly head. Dur­ing that first year of blog­ging, my search for every­day beauty – and the abil­ity to post it for the world to see – gave me com­fort, hope and a new per­spec­tive.  And the sup­port I received from read­ers was the fuel that kept me going.
 
I’m fast approach­ing the fifth anniver­sary of my blog. It’s now called Choos­ing Beauty because I believe we each make a daily choice – whether con­scious or not – to see or shun the beauty in our lives. It is there, wait­ing to be noticed, eager to inspire us and ready to com­fort us. I learned this from my blog and it changed my life for good.

About Liv Lane

How To Build A Blog You Truly Love is a soul-stirring, blog-boosting e-course for any­one who longs to feel more inspired, excited and rewarded by their adven­tures in blog­ging. Led by inspi­ra­tional speaker, radio per­son­al­ity and vet­eran blog­ger Liv Lane of Choos­ing Beauty, you’ll be lov­ingly guided through an inno­v­a­tive process of self-reflection and in-depth learn­ing. Over the six-week course, you’ll develop your own unique blog­ging blue­print — designed to help you achieve sweet suc­cess and deep ful­fill­ment for years to come. Plus, gain exclu­sive access to Liv’s inter­views with more than a dozen super­star blog­gers on how they’re rock­ing the blo­gos­phere and livin’ the dream.
**
Spe­cial: Sign up here for 20% off this six-week course (start­ing June 5th).  I’ll be at this course both as a par­tic­i­pant and a con­trib­u­tor!
 

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Inspiration, Life Tagged With: , ,
May 20, 2011 By 62 Comments

Why Do You Ride?

Note:  If you’re hav­ing trou­ble view­ing the video, click here.

 

Why do you ride?

Filed Under: Health & Fitness, Life Tagged With: ,
May 18, 2011 By 38 Comments

Wickedly Chic, This Is!

“The best way to pre­dict your future is to cre­ate it.” ~ Peter Drucker

On a recent trip, I attended a con­fer­ence in Cal­i­for­nia.  While the con­fer­ence was amaz­ing, what really added to that expe­ri­ence was really feel­ing a con­nec­tion with the peo­ple in atten­dance.  Today I have one of these won­der­ful souls here at the Jun­gle, shar­ing a bit of her story.  Liz Non­nemacher is the founder and cre­ative genius behind the very pop­u­lar Wickedly Chic, a site ded­i­cated to help­ing small busi­ness own­ers get the word out on their prod­ucts and services.

Please read along, as Liz shares a more in depth look at who she is and what she has created.

1.  Tell us a lit­tle bit about who “you” are (fam­ily, career, any spe­cial life expe­ri­ences you’d like to share, etc.)
I’m Liz Non­nemacher and I have a full life. It might be a lit­tle bit too full at times but that’s okay. I have a hus­band, two daugh­ters, two step­sons, two golden retriev­ers. We cur­rently live in the Chicago sub­urbs and we are plan­ning a move to sunny Florida this sum­mer when my youngest daugh­ter grad­u­ates from high school. Enough is enough with the long win­ters. This will be the 5th (and warmest state) that I have lived in.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Liz, what’s the deal here???  You know…I’m your neigh­bor to the north…and here you go ditch­ing me!!  (hmmm…as I look out­side at a cool, rainy morn­ing…) How about this?  Since you’re going to Florida, I expect I’ll now have a tour guide when I come down there! 

2.  I love the con­cept behind your site, Wickedly Chic, and how it cre­ates a space for bud­ding entre­pre­neurs to share their wares. How long have you had this, and what led to cre­at­ing it?
I started Wickedly Chic on a whim in May of 2006 (which means that “she” is just about to turn 5). Cre­at­ing Wickedly Chic was not really some­thing inten­tional or some­thing that I wrote down and worked up a plan for. You know how there are some peo­ple who have to read all of the “rules” or make lists or can’t make deci­sions with­out con­sult­ing their list of what­ever? I’m not one of those. Some­where on the web (maybe Twit­ter), I read a quote about suc­cess­ful peo­ple hav­ing a very small gap between idea and action. That’s me.

Basi­cally, I have always loved small busi­nesses, felt that they needed more atten­tion, some­one sug­gested that I start a web­site and it’s really gone from there. When I started Wickedly Chic, I could do two things online. Place orders and use email. That’s it. I had no idea about any­thing tech­ni­cal or how to cre­ate and what to do. But my old­est daugh­ter was going off to col­lege and I thought this would be a nice lit­tle hobby since I was a stay-at-home mom. Maybe I would even make a cou­ple hun­dred dol­lars. Imag­ine that!

But I found that I enjoyed work­ing on Wickedly Chic so much and it gained atten­tion quickly that I went with it and have built it into a full-time endeavor with a team as of today.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: Happy 5 Year Birth­day Wickedly Chic!!  And that’s what is really so great about this thing we call the Inter­net — if some­one has an idea, they can go out there and do it — and the web makes it that much more pos­si­ble!  Liz, you are a gift for small busi­ness, giv­ing them one more way to reach out and share their prod­ucts — and that is awe­some!!

3.  You arrive home, and there hap­pens to be a genie in a bot­tle await­ing your arrival (stranger things have hap­pened!!).  You are granted one wish.  What do you choose, and why?
Health and hap­pi­ness for myself and my family…always. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s so basic but often we don’t give much thought to the things that really matter.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Our health and hap­pi­ness, these are both things that are so easy to just take for granted, until one (or both) are taken from us.  I love this…

4.  Tell us one unex­pected thing that has hap­pened to you in the last year.
I seem to be cre­at­ing a lot of my own “unex­pected” lately. For exam­ple, meet­ing Lance. I wasn’t plan­ning on going out to Cal­i­for­nia for the event but at the last minute, I knew I needed to be there.  I just find myself doing more and being part of more endeav­ors that I never imag­ined I would be.

I’ve also found that Wickedly Chic has given “birth” so to speak to a num­ber of new things that I didn’t know would hap­pen dur­ing the past year. Wickedly Social was born within the last month as a most fab­u­lous way for busi­nesses to get the word out about their prod­ucts and events…via me.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  I wasn’t plan­ning to go out to Cal­i­for­nia, either!  It was a last minute deci­sion — and I’m so glad I did!!  What a great con­fer­ence!  And what’s the deal with this pic­ture you sent me (note — Liz is not in this photo…she was sit­ting back enjoy­ing the *ahem* “enter­taint­ment”)???  What was I think­ing, any­way, “try­ing” to dance??  (ummm.…thanks Liz, for pass­ing this on).  By the way, I’ve kind of com­mit­ted to going back again next year (it was sooo much fun!), so I’ll expect to see you there!

That’s a great point though — about lis­ten­ing to the voice inside (and know­ing what’s needed for you).  It’s all too easy to let this voice sit on the back burner — and look what we miss when we do.

Social media is really becom­ing an impor­tant strat­egy for reach­ing out and con­nect­ing with oth­ers — so very awe­some that you’re help­ing peo­ple reach an even greater audience!

5.  If you had to pick one thing as your great­est achieve­ment, what would it be (and why)?
Oh, the kids. I have two daugh­ters (22 and 17) and while they drive me crazy on occa­sion (as I am sure that I do to them also), they are really won­der­ful and car­ing girls. I have a plaque in my house that says “It’s Nice to Be Impor­tant But It’s More Impor­tant to Be Nice.” The girls seem to have fol­lowed that.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Our kids most def­i­nitely pro­vide that two-way “crazy” (I know!!).  And yet, behind all of that, what a gift…life that we’ve nur­tured in this world. 

6.  A fun day for you – tell me what that might con­sist of.
Well, I love to travel and I’m quite happy when I am doing so. But in ordi­nary life, it’s prob­a­bly as sim­ple as just mean­der­ing around with no plan at all and check­ing out places that I have never been. On sec­ond thought, I like hav­ing no plan at all when I travel. I’m also per­fectly con­tent lay­ing in bed all day with a book.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Those days of just wan­der­ing, they really can be some of the most mean­ing­ful — get­ting off the beaten path, and just being in the moment (what­ever that brings).

7.  Deep-down, Liz, what makes you, “you”?
Off of the top of my head, I feel that the biggest thing that defines me is that I truly believe in serv­ing oth­ers when I can. It doesn’t mean that I don’t take care of myself but I will help some­one in need with­out think­ing about it or think­ing if there is any­thing in it for me.

I’m also very quirky, a bit “off” and a lot of fun. And I love to read. It gives me a lot of knowl­edge and I am always sur­pris­ing myself and oth­ers by how much I know.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Liz, I could real­l­lly use some help with.… (ha!!).  When we serve oth­ers, it shows we really care.  That’s some­thing that shines through so brightly with you!  Mix that with quirky fun…and life is pretty darn grand!!

Clos­ing Thoughts:  Liz, thank you for being here and for shar­ing “you”.  As I learn more about your jour­ney, I’m drawn into what is pos­si­ble when we just go out there and do it!  You have, and you’ve cre­ated some­thing very spe­cial in the process.  

And next time we meet up (Jan­u­ary, yes??) I’m buy­ing lunch for you…not only will it be great to catch up, I’ll also find out what kind of crazy pic­tures you’re stash­ing away that I don’t know about!  Liz, this has been so much fun hav­ing you here, and I look for­ward to know­ing you even bet­ter.

You can keep up with Liz, and Wickedly Chic by fol­low­ing her on Twit­ter and Face­book. 

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With:
May 10, 2011 By 67 Comments

Love: Where Does It Start?

Have a Heart Desaturated Free Creative Commons
Creative Commons License photo credit: Pink Sher­bet Photography

“You, your­self, as much as any­body in the entire uni­verse, deserve your love and affec­tion.” ~ Bud­dha

This thing called love…

The month is Sep­tem­ber.  A sunny after­noon brings the desire to get out and explore.  Just a short drive and I’ll be there.

We’re get­ting ahead of our­selves, though.  Let’s take a step back.

The day, I’m not sure.  There were many.  Let’s say it is a mid-morning in June.  I’m hang­ing out in the sand­box, load­ing up a dumptruck with sand and dirt.  The grass, the trees, the plants…they are grow­ing around me.  I don’t notice.  The sand has my attention. 

I’m maybe eight years old.

Fast for­ward back to September. 

The sky is big, the shad­ows from the moun­tains an instant reminder of the vast­ness and grandeur of this land.  I start out along the “safe” routes.  Trav­el­ing down the high­way, stop­ping at well-marked and eas­ily acces­si­ble land­marks.  The tree lines, the water­falls, the moun­tain peaks — views that are incred­i­ble to take in.

(am I really tak­ing them in?)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less trav­eled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost

Trav­el­ing along, I turn onto a much less trav­eled road.  The views more obscured and fewer places of “inter­est” has made this road less trav­eled.  I drive, won­der­ing at what point I should abort this route and turn back.  Some­thing (that lit­tle voice within) says “go a lit­tle fur­ther”.  I hap­pen upon a park­ing lot tucked back off the road.  Maybe two other cars are here, and it seems so quiet, so still, so peace­ful.  A small pond is the play­ground for a cou­ple of ducks.  A man is fish­ing nearby, and a mother and daugh­ter are return­ing from a walk near the pond.  Another trail leads up into the deeper parts of the forest.

…the deeper parts of the forest…the deeper parts of me…

The crunch­ing of leaves as I walk along this trail, that’s all I hear.  When I stop, silence.  I wan­der, deeper into this part of the for­est, none of it known to me, and all of it known to me.

I wan­der into a clear­ing, and the path and direc­tion become not so clear.  I wan­der, not know­ing I’m wan­der­ing off the trail.  Soon enough, it’s clear I’ve found my way off any­thing resem­bling a trail.  There’s a hill, and a stream down below.  The flow­ing water draws my atten­tion, and I make my way toward it.  The car­cass of some ani­mal is near the stream.  The moun­tains sur­round­ing me are no longer vis­i­ble in the dense­ness of where I’m at.  Foot­steps along the stream, as I feel really at peace being here.

…and then I stop.

My gaze turns back, back to that small hill which brought me the stream.  It’s still there, except, it is dif­fer­ent. Where was that rock I climbed over?  Wasn’t there some­thing that looked like a path, lead­ing down to where I am?  None of that is here.

…and the sun is set­ting as a cool­ness begins to fill the air.

My heart begins to race a bit, as the thought of “lost” floats through my head.  Quickly and with­out much thought, I begin to travel back up that hill, look­ing for some­thing famil­iar, some­thing reassuring. 

Back to that sand­box for a moment. 

Every­thing around me, I know it’s there — the grass, the trees, the plants.  I know, and I don’t notice.

And to that for­est deep within…

Today I’m keenly aware of the trees, the plants, the rocks.  I notice my footsteps..does any­thing look like what I saw just ten min­utes ear­lier?  A sound…what was that?

And as quickly as it began, this feel­ing of unsassuredness…it passes.  A famil­iar sight, this big group of boul­ders, and the trail right around the corner.

Back to the Sandbox

That sand­box, it is like me.  There is love in that old box (or tire, as was the case for me).  What was out­side, it was amaz­ing and incred­i­ble.  When I was in that sand­box, though, I was focused on being in that sand­box.   I didn’t really think about it — at eight years old it was just a sand­box.  (and so much more)  See, I think that intrin­si­cally, we are love.  And at eight years old, while I didn’t define it as such, I loved life…and that was some­thing that started within.  Love the sandbox.…love the world around me.  Love me…love the world around me.

And That Sep­tem­ber Day

That Sep­tem­ber day.  Just me, far from home and all alone.  Does love for self ever feel like that?  Has the love I feel for myself ever felt like that?

I’m reminded of a time a few years back — a time where love for me wasn’t really present.  And with my own per­sonal love (real, gen­uine love) not present, my out­side view of the world (both near and far) was much more jaded, much more “see­ing the neg­a­tive”, much less openly loving.

Like this visit to the moun­tain, love…it’s like that.  There’s this path, that is much like the sur­face of who we are.  Facial expres­sions.  Appear­ance.  Friend­ships.  Fam­ily.  Etc. Etc.  There’s also a deeper part of us, too — that get­ting off of the path.  And these places “off the path”, the inner part of who we are — they can maybe seem unknown, scary, unloved, ignored, new, excit­ing, off the wall, etc, etc. 

Do you play it safe, and stay on the trails, the trails of you?  It’s so nice, this path that’s known, com­fort­able, famil­iar.  Except, are you miss­ing out on some­thing even greater — are you miss­ing out on con­nect­ing fully with who you are and the real that comes from know­ing you, see­ing you, lov­ing you?

…and I wan­der off the trail, the nicely marked trail called “my life”…

And I find these amaz­ing things that are me.  (and maybe some things I don’t really like all that well, too…the messy part)

That is me, though — all of these parts, and it’s so much more than the clearly marked trail (the image we present to the outer world).

Self Love Is

…con­nect­ing with who I am

…the imper­fect me, formed in perfection

…the nooks and cran­nies that are part of me, the things that no one sees and only I know

…the dark corners

…and the light

…is like a sand­box and veer­ing off the trail

…start­ing within and going out

Here’s How It Works For Me

When I choose to love me — the whole me — for who I am, it’s a self­less love.  It’s a self­less love as I’m con­nect­ing with me on a deeper and more per­sonal level.  And when I do, I love the world around me more fully, more genuinely…

How about you?  When you choose to get off the clearly marked trail of “you”, what do you see?  And do you love what you are being?

L O V E

…is beau­ti­ful…

Enjoyed read­ing my story of self-love?  Well, there’s more! You can also read the rest of the sto­ries writ­ten by online per­sonal devel­op­ment blog­gers in a Self Love Sto­ries Report. Eve­lyn Lim started the ball rolling by shar­ing her story in the post Self Love Story: Lessons from the Heart.  She had writ­ten it in response to an intu­itive call to cre­ate greater Self Love Aware­ness.  Eve­lyn and I are com­pil­ing this report together, and it will be avail­able as a free down­load soon!

Filed Under: Inspiration, Life Tagged With: ,
May 3, 2011 By 108 Comments

Crash and Learn

Oops!
Creative Commons License photo credit: Kyle May

“Tell me and I’ll for­get; show me and I may remem­ber; involve me and I’ll under­stand.” ~ Chi­nese Proverb

Our Best Learning

When do you learn some­thing in the best, most effec­tive man­ner?  When you are doing that some­thing, right!  Even more specif­i­cally, when you’re doing some­thing and it does not go exactly as expected, the learn­ing meter ramps up even higher.

So think about this.  Where are you with some of the aspi­ra­tions you have?  Are you out there, actively learn­ing by actively doing?  Are you out there, try­ing things out and then pick­ing up the pieces when they don’t go as planned (and learn­ing in even more mean­ing­ful ways)?

An Evening in April

It was a Sun­day evening, and we were mak­ing a trip to our local gro­cery store.  Cameron, my 12 year old son, and I. He loves the gro­cery store, and never passes up the oppor­tu­nity to visit.  And after years and years of these vis­its, he has become a really great help. 

In usual fash­ion we make our way through the store, and then to the check­out lanes.  Gro­cery bags in hand, we wan­der out to our car, and begin the drive toward home.

As we are approach­ing the road we live on, Cameron asks “Can I drive home?”.

This road we live on, there is so lit­tle other traf­fic — and espe­cially so on a Sun­day evening.

He’s asked this before, a cou­ple of times in recent months.  And he’s done so well on the very short remain­ing drive home.  (he’s really good at dri­ving the trac­tor to cut our grass!)  I say “yes”.

We pull over near the side of the road and change places — Cameron in the dri­vers seat and I in pas­sen­ger seat.  Down the road we go.  He has done this before, so I’m com­pletely com­fort­able as he gets behind that wheel.  As per any usual evening, we see no one else as we travel the short dis­tance down this road, and we approach the driveway.

As we are enter­ing the dri­ve­way, Cameron asks “Can I drive into the garage?”.

The right answer is “we should stop in the dri­ve­way”.  Actu­ally, the right answer is really that he shouldn’t be dri­ving at all (it’s too late for that now, though…).

He’s doing so well.  “Sure”, I say.

We are hardly mov­ing, just slowly eas­ing our way into the garage. 

Except.

Except we are start­ing to get a bit close to the left hand side of the garage wall.  I’m watch­ing that, telling Cameron to straighten it out a bit.

BAM!!

We crash into the front of the garage.  Snow shov­els fly­ing (isn’t it about time to pack those away!?!?).   A shelf inside the house has sev­eral things fly­ing to the floor, as my other son is in there doing home­work.  Lora (my wife) comes run­ning outside.

…there Cam and I sit, a slight wave to her…

In the end, there are a cou­ple of bro­ken shov­els and some dry­wall that needs repair­ing.  Oth­er­wise, all is good.  We take some time to clean up the mess we’ve created.

In ret­ro­spect, I should prob­a­bly have not had my 12 year old dri­ving our car (I don’t sug­gest you try this at home!).

This expe­ri­ence, though, is one that’s given both Cameron and I a learn­ing moment.  A learn­ing moment, by being out there and doing that which we really want to do ( and he def­i­nitely really wanted to drive). 

The Take Away For You

What is it that you want to do, except you are not sure you fully know how to do it?  Where are you hold­ing your­self back because you don’t think you’re good enough?

See the pos­si­bil­ity in you!

See the pos­si­bil­ity in you, and then go out and crash…and learn…and grow.

And in all of this, move more fully into the depth of who you truly are…

Filed Under: Life, True Peak Journey