It's the comparison that really takes it out of me and leaves me grabbing for more acceptance from others and resigning myself to my not enoughness. For much of my life I’ve operated as if there is one right path to prove I’m worthy and that path is paved by comparison almost exclusively to others although sometimes I compare myself to general standards. The funny thing about comparison with others is that even when I come out “on top” (i.e., I am “ahead” on whatever thing I’m comparing on, some of the favorites are mothering, achievements, weight, clean house) I still don’t feel good. In fact, I often feel just as (if not more) anxious as when I’m “behind.” I think that’s something to do with control – when I’m behind I can control my own effort to “catch up.” When I’m ahead I still can control my own effort and yet I have no control over others “catching up” or “surpassing” me. Either way it’s a lose-lose. I never feel enough and my anxiety spirals in the process. I truly have lived “comparison is the thief of joy” a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt along with comparison being the “death of joy” as said by Mark Twain. So there you go … I know it, I really know deep in my being that it’s not good for me (or you) to compare. And yet, it’s such a deep, dark habit of my over-functioning judge that I keep on doing it.  
This month as I continue to come home to myself in all my perfectly imperfectness, I’m going to start with noticing my judge’s comparison habit, celebrating my noticing, and letting go of the comparison, and coming home to myself with a breath and a shift. Maybe even blowing it a kiss as I let it go. Not battling it, just gently sending it off with an “I see you and know that you are trying to keep me safe AND I’m okay just as I am.” This is a practice I’ve drawn from the Positive Intelligence (PQ) work that I do. It’s about bringing my Sage self (in PQ language) and true essence forward, putting her in the driver’s seat. By the way, she loves to drive and she is available when I come back to my whole self, not just my thoughts but also my heart and my body. This is the opening to trusting myself, my true self, not my judge! It’s coming back to the “spot of grace” within. She’s got this and so do you! Let’s chat about what you gain when you let go of comparison in the comments. Or if you are having trouble letting go, what is it costing you? We can do this together! ​

I was completely immersed in the lies of “I must make everyone happy at all times” – people must like, better yet love, me for me to be safe and “I must get it right, even better, perfect” – mistakes are crises and show my imperfectness which is not acceptable. Those of you who have been following my journey may notice some common themes here, yep, there I was and here I still am in all my perfectly imperfectness! 

​During that time, I was doing all the things I was “supposed” to do, in fact, you could say “I had it all.” I was starting my own business and working on some new and interesting projects, I was parenting four children/teenagers, I was spending time with friends and family, I was coordinating the household, and on and on. All of these things were amazing and I was experiencing most of them from a place of not enough, try harder. So essentially I was missing it and by it, I mean everything. What I know now is that I was so stuck in my head that I truly was absent from this wonderful life I was creating much of the time. That’s when I hired myself a leadership coach. I had taken on a new, high visibility consulting project with a Fortune 100 company and I wanted support. Best decision I’ve made, thank you to Therese Kienast for transforming my life.
 
What’s interesting about that time is that I thought I was highly self-aware and actually what I was, was highly self-critical. It took (and still takes) coaching and the Radical Leadership program for me to realize that awareness and judgment are two different things. Thank goodness, because who wants more awareness if it makes me feel bad about myself like the constant inner chatter of how I’m messing up does? No thank you, I’d rather be blissfully ignorant to this “awareness” aka judgments. And that’s what’s interesting, awareness is in some ways closer to ignorance in the way it feels than it is to judgment. Awareness is just noticing without making meaning. It’s observing without evaluating, it’s being curious about what is right now (hence the need for being present first). What a relief! Curious awareness is fun, light, open and shiny. Judgment is hard, heavy, dark, and confining. Awareness is a light that we get to turn toward whatever we choose to notice. That’s all. And when we notice without judgment possibilities emerge. I’m exploring what pure awareness is and feels like this month. Join me and let’s chat about it in the comments.

What I learned this past weekend at the soul retreat is that coming home is not about adding more to what I already have it’s about letting go of what keeps me away from home, and I see that these are the same things that keep away from presence. We don’t need to create home within, it’s already here and the practice is finding our way back to center and the path is presence. It’s being here now in this moment. Letting go of the job of Manager of the Universe, surrendering to what is in this moment and accepting. Not to resign myself or to victimize myself but to live into myself and be with what is because guess what, we don’t get to control the universe or even for me my dog (when she wants to sniff something she wants it now 😆) as much as we might want to or think we have to. This is freedom. Just yesterday in one of my Positive Intelligence (PQ) pods one of our participants exclaimed “acceptance is so fun!” What wisdom – it’s so fun to freely be in this moment without the heavy burden of making it different.

​What’s interesting is that I don’t always feel at home in the body I live in or the mind I live with, like I do in the house I live in. And that’s because I’m literally not home, I’m absent. I get distracted by all the ways I judge myself, others, my circumstances. Again, it’s about letting go of these habits of mine, of getting it right, being perfect, beating myself up. These are the ways I stay out to lunch. I get wrapped up in a spiral of not enough’s or you aren’t doing it right or that’s not okay and it’s exhausting. This constant need to be someone else, improving more, fixing more. Yet when I take a breath. I know it’s not about adding some kind of quick fix or reading one more book (although I do seem to act like this next book is the one 😉) – I don’t need that and neither do you.

Instead the practice is to set up house here in my body, quieting my not enough or fix it brain, and coming home to who I am by being present. From presence, grace and love grow within me and ripple out beyond me. Coming home – it sounds so peaceful and right for me. And it’s up to me, I can do it and you can too. Oh yay, something that we can do (if we choose it). We can be present in this moment by coming home to what matters. It sounds so easy and I’ve said the words “be present” more times that I can count. Now it’s about living into presence. I can’t control what’s happening in my country or the world AND I can contribute and act from home, a place of grounded grace and presence within me. When I come home and you do too, it’s the first step to transformation and when we do it together, we change the world. What is your practice for coming home? Share your thoughts in the comments – we can do this together!

And this morning as I was finishing my morning run/walk I saw a sign that I've seen countless times. And today I saw it in a new way. It's yellow and black and says "Please Slow Down!" (emphasis added 😀). This sign, put up to protect our children on the residential streets, hit me in a new and deeper way today. Yes, I want to slow down on the roads and what if today it's giving me a message to slow down in my life. Ooh, that's what I need to hear right now, simply slow down. My week has been filled with unexpected happenings including a hospital stay for my just turned 88 year old mom (she's feeling better), an unexpected infection (it's better), some unexpected conversations (good to have), some unexpected national events (not sure when this will get better) and that's when the old habits take over, the worries, the anxiety, the need to fix. When I slow down, take a breath, open to seeing what is and listening for what’s here and what’s next and come back to this present moment that's when I have a moment of peace and that's enough right now. That's the presence I want to come home to.
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Presence is at the center of the Leading from the Inside Out framework that is an integral part of the leadership coaching I do and the women’s leadership program I run and when I choose it the way that I live and work (which is not always the case, full disclosure 😉). In fact, the reason I’m thinking so much about it right now is that a couple of weeks ago I wrote the Presence chapter of my upcoming book (wahoo, I wrote a chapter!) about Leading from the Inside Out. In the process of writing, I was reminded again of why presence is essential as well as why it’s so easy to step away from especially when I'm moving full speed ahead to what's next. Presence is our aliveness and in many, if not most, moments of my life I’m not really, truly noticing being alive (that seems weird but true) I’m just living. Just living, breathing in and out without attention – the lights are on but nobody is really home. Going from one meeting to the next, checking of one more to-do and moving to the next (or sometimes just avoiding the to-do’s and moving from one episode to the next on whatever I’m streaming right now), scrolling through one story/reel to the next can separate me from the ALIVE part of living. I’m going through the motions and not really there. It’s a way of being here/not here – I’m doing all the things and somehow I’m not really in it. I'm not present!

As I blogged about last month my 2025 commitment is to come home to myself, offering grace and love. Slowing down is my way home and it's all wrapped up in presence. It’s the space I need to sense into this moment right now and find the joy in it, the joy of the now. The smiles and laughs from my mom, the calls from the kids, the sunshine on my face, the time to just be – it’s all part of the miracle of presence that’s available when I’m home. Stay tuned for more on my practice of coming home to presence. I’m going to start posting twice a month. Can’t wait? 😆 Let’s connect.

This experience has been a great reminder of the importance of taking time for myself. Truly choosing to be with me. It’s not a choice I make as often as I’d like. Instead I spend a lot of time rushing from thing to thing, fitting in one more task, getting lost in my thoughts of “what if” and “what now”  and “how.” When I do this, I disconnect from what really matters to me, what I value. I also get disconnected from those around me. Sometimes it can take a full minute or more to register that my husband has just said something. Responding at that point, even if I can replay what he said, is almost laughable. 
 
And the answer is simple, but not easy. It’s about taking a beat and taking a breath. Connecting to what’s important. Adding some space and bringing attention to that, whatever that is in the moment. Right now it’s writing this blog. Tomorrow it will be something else. And that’s the work for me, following the thread, what’s important now? How about now? It reminds me of the Verizon commercials – “can you hear me now?” Let’s listen for ourselves in the midst of the busy. When we find our voice that’s where we find our life. It also reminds me of Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey which ends with:
 
“But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
 
That voice, my voice, is saying the phrase grounded grace. It’s my phrase of the year along with my commitment to coming home to myself and offering grace and love. My word started out as grace, which is like a cool drink of water on a hot day or simply a deep breath. It feels just right for this year a follow-on to last year’s word of ease. Ease is about acceptance and that’s not an easy nut for me to crack. I like to fix things, not accept them. Fixing is the way I try to control, that’s how I try to handle the uncertainty and fear. Accepting is the letting go – not something that comes naturally for me. So that’s where grace comes in. Grace is about forgiveness. Offering grace allows me to let go. It’s about perfectly imperfect – phew, that’s what I want.
 
And during morning yoga as I thought of my word, I noticed a yearning for the space of grace (it’s a rhyme 😉) along with some structure too. The first words that came to mind were strong or strength, they didn’t quite fit. And then as I stood in tree pose it came to me, it’s grounded grace – that’s my phrase for the year. Grace with all its allowing and spaciousness and grounded with its clarity and foundational strength. Grounded grace comes from a deeper knowing, it’s about guiding and forgiving when I make a wrong turn. It’s about listening to my voice. It’s a both/and, if you’ve been reading my blog, you know I love my both/ands! 😊
 
So with grounded grace, my living into 2025 is not about casting far and wide for the next exciting thing, it’s not about finishing the to-do list for the next achievement, it’s not even about fixing the problems of the world for the next safe moment (although I really want to do that), it’s about coming home to myself for what really matters. Coming home starts right here, in this place in the blog image, where I have quiet time with just me in the morning. Offering myself grace and love in the moment so that I can hear my own voice and I'm available to offer it others from my grounded center. And from that place following my path, the path that unfolds one step at a time. Looking for your path forward? Let’s connect.

And they impact me just like the lions, tigers, and bears. I’m fearful, I’m running, avoiding, sometimes resisting or trying to appease by working harder, speeding up, making more lists. If I just get more organized, try harder, I can out run them or meet them. Really there's not much difference.

And there goes my energy! I first wrote that these fears steal my energy and I know that’s not true. I’m giving my energy to them. That’s the thing, I get to choose where I spend my energy and how to connect with it. Such a good lesson and so often I forget, until I don’t. Then I realize that “expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my” are not real unless I make them real. There are choices to be made.
 
And this brings me to the title of this post, What about Manifesting? What does it mean to manifest, is that real? How does it work when I’m subsumed into my fears, the “expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my”? This month during my daily dog walks I’ve been listening to the TransformAble book of the month Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything by James R. Doty. I love the word "manifest" - it was my word of the year in 2023. It is a word with direction, agency, and power which is exactly what I needed as Stephanie Shivar and I launched our first cohort of National Women's Impact Leadership Institute (NWILI).  It's also a word with some baggage. It's kind of woo-woo, possibly a shell game touted as a way to make money quickly and easily. That's not the manifesting that I'm wondering about and it's not the manifesting that Doty is writing about. Manifesting can now be described in terms of brain function with the understanding that cognitive neuroscience offers us about the brain's structures. Doty writes "This has allowed us to demonstrate that manifesting is neither a get-rich-quick scheme nor a misguided wish-fulfillment system but is part of the brain's extraordinary ability to change, heal and remake itself, known as neuroplasticity." It's about growing and developing with the full power of our mind, body, and heart. It's about being intentional in the life we are creating. That's what I'm talking about! 😀

What I'm learning about manifesting is that it's directly aligned with my leading from the inside out framework. It's all about presence, awareness, and self-compassion. It's about harnessing the power we already have and directing our intention and agency to what really matters. What resonates with me, what gives me joy, what is the service I'm uniquely designed to provide, that's what I can use as a guide. And the key to manifesting is getting in the driver's seat and taking the wheel. This is top of mind for me as my youngest daughter is logging her driving hours with her permit. She is learning to drive and all of her attention is placed on it when she's at the wheel. It has to be for her and her parents or brothers 😉 who are teaching her to stay safe! The thing is once we have been driving for awhile it's easy to get lulled into the context we are in and forget that we are doing it. I no longer need to put all my attention on the driving itself because it's automatic. This is wonderful in many ways, it allows my brain to do other things while driving. It's also not so wonderful because that's where the "expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my" can find a lot of airtime. They take up space and energy. So the trick is to bring the attention back to driving (i.e., living), being in the driver's seat and truly creating our lives through choices. Once we take the wheel we can embed what we want into our whole selves, not only our conscious self but also our subconscious self. The parts of our brain, heart, and body that are working under the radar. This is where the power of intention and attention manifests and that is what creates our lives. When we get clear on what we want by being present and aware and we give ourselves grace and allow for our perfectly imperfectness we can open to what really matters and let that percolate holistically. The percolation is not necessarily conscious, it's the pre-work that's conscious and then the work happens within us. behind the scenes.

I've been doing a puzzle with my family over the holidays - in fact we had a fun 30 minutes of working faster and faster until we finished the latest 1,000-piecer and miracles of miracles not a single piece was missing. I'm a good puzzler, it's not something I can explain or teach, it feels like it just happens. I'm not one to look at the picture on the box and find where a piece goes in the puzzle. I just find a piece and try it in a spot and feel delighted when it fits. I think my puzzling process is much like manifesting. I embed all the aspects of the piece, the colors, the shape, all of it. And when the time is right, either right then or later, lo and behold I place the piece I embedded and it fits. When we manifest, we embed our deepest, most meaningful desires in our heart, mind, and body and then we get to work without even knowing it. Our subconscious starts looking for ways to create what we want. It feels like it just happens because it's happening under the surface, like the duck paddling under the water. All is smooth sailing above water and underneath so much is happening. What's amazing about manifesting is it's magical and it's real too. We are in the driver's seat and when we place our attention on what really matters we can create it. I'm NOT saying that we can do anything we want, that we get exactly what we wish for, or that things turn out the way we want them to all of the time. In fact, an important part of manifesting is letting go of the "how" of the manifestation and instead trusting and staying with the unfolding. What I am saying is that we are always being and doing something and manifesting is about recognizing the impact of our being and doing in the world with gratitude. It's about letting go of "expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my" and being open to what's possible. It's about getting clear on what it is that we want to do with "this one wild and precious life" and then allowing and accepting what we create to be perfectly imperfect. Feeling caught in the "expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my"? Let's connect.

More, more, more, faster, faster, faster. That’s the soup I’m swimming in lately. So not very easeful when I think about it. Not easeful at all in fact.
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And yet, there have been lots of moments of ease, it is possible for me when I choose it. I often forget to choose it, it’s not my habit. Just this morning I woke up and instead of hopping out of bed to get the day going, I got out my book and started reading. What a luxury it is to read in the morning before I get up – I only do it rarely and this weekend I’ve done it three days in a row! And it just so happened that the book I’m reading, the TransformAble December book of the month, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, describes the trap of speed that’s running amok in our culture right now. “As the world gets faster and faster, we come to believe that our happiness, or our financial survival, depends on our being able to work and move and make things happen at super-human speed. We grow anxious about not keeping up – so to quell the anxiety, to try to achieve the feeling that our lives are under control, we move faster.” Wow, do I get caught in this trap a lot! And it's all wrapped up in the striving, proving habit of mine. That part of me that really, really wants to be perfect. 'Perfect,' it's the holy grail of living right?! That's what my judge tells me. In fact, she goes farther, she waxes poetic on all the ways I won't survive if I'm not perfect. When it's actually the opposite, the only way that I do live and thrive (not just survive) is by stepping into the ease of perfectly imperfect.

Almost 6 years ago I vacationed in Kauai with a stress fracture in my hip. The perfect getaway hiking trip to explore the beauty of the island 22 years after our honeymoon with our dear friends became something else for me because I not only could not hike but also was on crutches. Oof, it was NOT perfect to say the least. And yet, it quickly became the perfectly imperfect trip! In fact, this trip was one of the most meaningful and wonderful trips I've ever had because I was on crutches. Midway through the trip after lots of reading and sitting in the sun I Googled "healing and Kauai" to schedule myself a massage or something similar while the others hiked. I came upon Touch Kauai and scheduled my healing journey with Katharina. We spent a whole day exploring the beauty of Kauai along with my old habits and contracts that were keeping me on the fast track to the impossible destination of perfection. At one point we visited a Hindu monastery. As we gazed upon the beauty of the river, Katharina asked me to really look at the natural beauty, to see all of it, not just the perfection but the flaws, the perfectly imperfectness of it. This shifted me in a profound way. The beauty and richness is not in the perfection but instead in the flaws. In our humanity, we too are most beautiful in our wholeness. Not in just the parts that "fit" or "look right" - in all of it, all of us. This is the ease of perfectly imperfect. All is welcome, all is acceptable, all is well. When I see this in nature and myself I can see it in others. It's a practice and it's one I sometimes forget. And with a balance of ease and effort I can choose to slow down and just be. This feels like ease as we enter into a busy holiday season. Looking for ease and wholeness, let's connect.