Embrace Different: A Neurodivergent’s Journey Of Navigating Life’s Challenges With Compassion And Acceptance

 

We face different challenges every day. And sometimes, we get to a point of burnout, panic, and anxiety. The fear of being different and not being enough can eat up our confidence faster than we can voice our needs. In this episode, Whitney Lauritsen shares the challenges she faces being neurodivergent as she goes through her daily routine, road trip planning, and other exciting events coming up in her life. She also shares how overwhelming emotions can cause you to lose focus and procrastinate. So if you are someone who constantly has difficulty speaking up and drowned in fear of failing and disappointing others, don’t miss this episode! Tune in and find out how you can use your takeaways from the past to guide you in making informed decisions and having grace for yourself despite not meeting expectations. And whether you are a neurodivergent or not, don’t lose faith; it’s all going to be okay. Treat yourself with acceptance and compassion.

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Embrace Different: A Neurodivergent’s Journey Of Navigating Life’s Challenges With Compassion And Acceptance

I have so much to share. This episode will likely be a little bit all over the place. I have felt like my brain is operating in some fascinating ways. I want to share that with you. I’m going to talk probably a little about my upcoming road trip again. In more general, it’s concepts and updates on how that’s going. I have some things I want to share that have been challenging and how I’ve been working through them, some notes from my well-being coaching training and likely some other topics that are going to pop up along the way.

I’ll start with my trip because that influences a lot of how I’m feeling. I’m amazed at how challenging it has been for me to get this trip in motion. I felt a lot of pressure. It was a Sunday night. I don’t have a ton of time until I leave town. I have a bunch of people more and more that have been adding up that I’m planning to see. They’re waiting for my schedule. We have to figure out the timing. I have campgrounds to book. I’ve been procrastinating this because it feels overwhelming. With my trips, it has been hard for my brain to sit down and focus on this.

I also have some other things I’ve been putting off like getting my taxes taken care of. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been somebody who procrastinates through overwhelm. My sister is a lot like this too. I believe that my sister has undiagnosed ADHD. From what I’ve read, this type of eleventh-hour work that I’ve had since college is a common trait of ADHD. Knowing that possibility, considering I haven’t had a formal diagnosis yet, has been helpful because instead of feeling shame around this, beating myself up, allowing other people’s perspectives like my parents would often feel very frustrated with me and the teacher used to feel frustrated, I spent so much time thinking that there was something wrong with me. I was bad and lazy because I couldn’t get things done in a timely manner.

Even though I have embraced this and found more grace for myself, it’s still tough because I tend to not want to let other people down. That’s probably going to be a big theme in this episode. With this pressure to make things happen, some of the things are time-sensitive like booking a campground because they can book up fast. Other things like my friends, I don’t want to hold them back from making other plans. I want to make sure that we have a good time together. It’s amazing how I’m planning out a trip that’s going to take me about two and a half weeks to get across the country from Los Angeles to Massachusetts. I’m going up to the Northwest part of the United States first and be on the East Coast doing a variety of things and then heading back.

Recognizing My Neurodivergent Journey

I feel like the pressure of all of that time building up for me. Oftentimes, at the end of the weekend, I feel very productive because even though I don’t work a super traditional work structure, Monday still feels like a brand new start to the work week. I was wrapping up some things for clients and trying to get some planning done. I remember being faced with the decision to either go to bed or stay up a little bit longer.

If you put something off for just a few days, then you might continue to put it off over and over again. Click To Tweet

I chose the latter, even though I’ve bumped my sleep schedule to be waking up much earlier than usual. If you didn’t know this about me, if I have my day structured in this way, I will wake up at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, which is sometimes challenging but I’m able to do it a good amount of time throughout the year. When I travel, I like to get up at 6:00 AM because I like to wake up with the sun and get a good start in the morning. I’ve been training and prepping my body to get up early.

I set my alarm at 7:45 AM. I stayed up until about at least 3:30 AM. I was in this hyper-focus mode of working on the trip. I probably spent 3 to 4 hours looking at every single detail researching things. The number of cross-reference research that I do is interesting. A lot of people, if not most people’s brains don’t work that way and this has also been part of my journey toward recognizing my neurodivergence because when I tell most people that I do things like this, they’re very perplexed. First of all, with staying up that late, most people that I meet do not do that. That should have been a huge signal to me that my brain worked differently because, anecdotally, within my conversations, it’s extremely rare that I meet people like that. Oftentimes, it makes me feel like an outcast.

Some people feel happy to have big differences between themselves and others. That makes them feel special. I would say that’s pretty minimal for me, for the most part. Things like this about myself make me feel like I’m weird, something’s wrong and I need to change. Through recognizing how this ties into neurodivergence, it has made me feel like, “What if that’s the way I am,” as I talked about the solo episode.

I’m striving to live life on my terms versus trying to shape it around what other people want me to do. I enjoy hyper-focusing on things and spending hours on them but it’s hard for me at the same time, especially when I’m feeling tired and then knowing the ripple effects that were going to have on me, leading up to this moment. I feel like my brain is functioning differently than it normally would.

A huge part of that is because I feel sleep deprived. I probably got 3 or 4 hours of sleep. I also had a sleep episode. If you didn’t know this about me, I have sleepwalking and sleep-talking tendencies. I don’t keep super close track of it but lately, it was on the more extreme side. It’s often triggered by knocking into less sleep and feeling stressed and anxious. It was the perfect storm for me. I wonder, “What does that do to my brain with these episodes in which I shoot out of bed, yelling and panicked?” I’m in this state of like fight or flight. I hope one day I can get to the bottom of that.

 

Accountability, Acceptance, And Compassion

It’s interesting because I had a session with a guest named Alexandra. Here’s one of my biggest takeaways that you’re going to learn. When I talked to her about martial arts, which ended up being this interesting theme, even though the episode was not meant to be about martial arts, I thought maybe we would talk about it for five minutes but it kept coming up throughout the episode likely because of her history but also my interest in it. I told her that I would like to hold myself accountable and prioritize martial arts training for myself.

It’s been a goal of mine for the past years because of travel but I haven’t prioritized it. I got overwhelmed researching it, trying to find the right place to go. I wanted to budget for it and it wasn’t a big financial priority for me. After that conversation, it started to come back up and feel like something I want to do as soon as I get back from this next trip. I was talking with her about how I was planning on researching it. She said, “If you do that research tonight, even if it’s 15 to 30 minutes of this research, it’s going to get you into motion versus if you put it off just a few days, then you might continue to put it off over and over again.”

She’s probably right. Having that accountability of someone else saying that to me, even if she will not follow up with me, knowing that I don’t want to let her down energetically, has inspired me. Hopefully, I have the mental and physical energy to research it. The challenge that she doesn’t know is I will likely not just spend fifteen minutes on that. Most research that I do tends to be 30 minutes to 1 hour very easily. That’s another thing that I struggle a lot with.

This is more common, which is time challenges. I tend to try to time block. I have a to-do list. I aim to get things done in a certain amount of time. I even estimate how long each task is going to take me but more often than not, it ends up taking me 2, 3 or 4 times as long, if not more. That’s also the way my brain works. It’s either getting easily distracted and switching things like I can jump from thing to thing, multitask and dip my toes into all stuff. I can also hyper-fixate on something. That’s all I can pay attention to. I start to feel stressed if anything else comes up for me. That combination makes a lot of things hard for me to accomplish and very exhausting and stressful.

What’s interesting is I wonder if any of that needs to change. This is something that I’m learning a lot as I go through my coaching training. I’m looking at my coaching psychology manual, which I’m reading as part of an emotional well-being coaching training program that I’m doing to become certified as an emotional well-being coach. One of the biggest takeaways from what I’ve learned from this program thus far is acceptance and compassion.

In order to further understand someone, be curious and have open, inviting, judgment-free, and playful exploration. Click To Tweet

I’m learning that in terms of being a coach but I’m simultaneously learning that in terms of my self-care, self-awareness and self-compassion. Along with that compassion, the training encourages you not to try to fix anything. That might be one of the greatest lessons I could learn in my life and something I wish I had learned much earlier because I’ve approached so much of life from this fixer mentality.

I find comfort and security in fixing things and problem-solving. I’m drawn to it. One of the reasons that I’ve been drawn to being a coach is because I want to help and support. Now that I’m seeing that coaching, at least in the philosophy of this training program, it’s best when you’re there to listen and provide emotional support as a psychologically safe container for somebody to share things and come to their conclusions. You’re not there as a coach to give expertise or try to fix someone.

One of the sections I read articulated that well. There’s a section here that focuses on assessments. This is something I plan to do in my private community Beyond Measure. If you didn’t know about this, I started this in 2020. It came out of my desire to have a safe place emotionally for people to gather, connect, interact with me, meet other new people, explore themselves and tap into their self-awareness. Every time I go through my coaching training, I’m thinking about Beyond Measure. I’m like, “We could do this. How could I improve it this way?” One thing in Beyond Measure that most of the participants seem to enjoy is assessments, activities and something that gets you to think.

There was a whole section about this in my coaching book, which lit me up. I learned there are close to fifteen different assessments. If you’re interested in things like that, for instance, if you’ve ever done the Myers-Brigg assessments, that’s one of the most well-known. Most of these I had never heard of before so there was a ton more. If you want to take any, I’m planning to do some of these in Beyond Measure.

I bring this up because there was this one line here that struck me. I’m going to go through a few different parts and see if I can find that exact line I’m thinking about. One is that, according to this manual, “Coaching clients grow through trial and correction, not trial and error.” I don’t love that word correction though so I’m taking that out of context. I hope I’m not misunderstanding that.

 

“The encouragement here to further understand someone is to be curious and have open, inviting, judgment-free and playful exploration.” For instance, one thing I’m learning here is instead of asking a lot of why questions, which could feel analytical and sometimes trigger someone to feel challenged or judged, you can ask them open-ended things like, “Tell me more about this.” A why could still be very open-ended but I like the tell-me-more phrasing. It’s inviting someone as opposed to putting them into this place of thinking that they need to change.

Maybe this was the line that I was thinking of, “Clients are used to taking assessments that have the intention of revealing flaws that need to be fixed. It is refreshing when assessments are used to reveal strengths that need to be reinforced.” That seems right because I resonated with this idea of revealing our strengths versus our opportunities or flaws. We tend to focus so much on what society does. We internalize that, at least I have, in so many ways. What if instead of saying, “I’m sleepwalking. Let’s fix that,” it would be nice to fix it, to be honest. It’s frustrating.

I don’t think it’s great for my health. Sometimes it’s even dangerous. I did a whole episode on Sleepwalking. I don’t necessarily have to fix it. Maybe I can understand it. Maybe through the understanding, it naturally fixes itself. The same thing can be said about procrastination. I spent so much of my life trying to stop being a procrastinator but what if instead, I tried to understand and saw where the strengths are? Hyper-focusing last minute at that eleventh hour, I get a lot done. I felt so accomplished even though I was up late and had this ripple effect of not making me feel so good. That’s probably going to impact me throughout the week.

Do I want those results? No, but there are the benefits of what I accomplished through hyper-fixating and procrastinating until right before I needed to go to bed as I typically do. That’s where I started to restructure my day. That’s how I started to allow myself to get up at 10:00 AM because my brain enjoys working after midnight. I have known that about myself for a long time but I tried to fix it and I never could. That acceptance and self-compassion have been helpful. It’s not fully easy.

It’s Okay

I want to share as I mentioned some other challenges specifically that I’ve had. One is that it’s tough for me to fully be myself and share things about myself. I get insecure while having a session. I’m afraid that I confuse people and bore them or they can’t follow my train of thought. I have insecurity about sounding like I’m talking about myself and it’s self-indulgent. All these little fears come up for me. I come back to myself and say, “This is the natural expression of who I am. If I can allow myself to show up as I am on this show, for instance, it doesn’t matter if some people don’t like it.” I’ve said this many times before but I have to constantly remind myself that I don’t need to please everybody. I don’t need everybody to like me. Not everybody does and that’s okay.

Understanding your flaws will naturally fix itself. Click To Tweet

I’ve said in the past that the phrase, “It’s okay,” is one of the most comforting things for me to hear even when I say it out loud. That came up in the coaching too in one of our classes. I wrote this down. It feels like it’s been this ongoing theme. It did come up in the episode with Coach Lee Hopkins if you haven’t read that yet. It’s so beautiful conversation about friendship but fully embracing yourself and also being okay with being problematic or being perceived as problematic. That was a great lesson from him.

One of my teachers said, “You’re the expert if you’re alive.” It’s out of context. I don’t remember what that was related to but it’s an interesting line to ponder. In my interpretation, you’re the expert of yourself if you’re still alive. You know yourself best. Many of us, if not most of us, have been trained to look outside of ourselves and focus on the external. It’s very easy and tempting to feel insecure, not good enough, doing the wrong thing, ashamed, guilty, embarrassed, on and on.

Setting Boundaries And Feeling Misunderstood

I love reflecting on all of this. This program has been so nourishing for me in that regard. It makes me excited to give back and share more. Another challenge likely along the same lines was something that seemed to have been a reoccurring theme. I mentioned this in the episode with Coach Lee Hopkins. I’ve had a few challenging experiences with not just my consulting client. There’s one in particular that we had a challenging communication. It still doesn’t feel fully resolved.

In that case, there seems to be a misunderstanding about my role as a freelance worker and our expectations. We’re clashing. The timeline was perceived differently in each other’s heads. Even though we had certain things in writing, the client assume some things that were beyond my boundaries. I chose to clarify and create some boundaries.

It was so hard mainly because I didn’t feel like this person fully understood me, which is a huge trigger for me and I didn’t know if they accepted me. I still feel this insecurity of, “Did I piss off this client? Does this client not like me? Do they think I’m high maintenance?” I started to notice that high maintenance element is coming up a lot.

 

With another client, I noticed that with them. I felt at times rejected like my ideas weren’t being taken. I was trying not to take it personally. That’s something I’ve had to constantly practice because who I am personally and professionally certainly overlap in some ways. If I can create some boundaries and say what I need professionally, it may be very different from what I would mean personally in a similar situation and finding the ability to be confident about something.

Even if deep down I don’t feel that confident, I’m practicing my confidence by stating boundaries. That feels hard. For example, when somebody says, “Can you do it this way?” If deep down doing it that way does not work for me, I’m practicing stating that. If they want something in a certain timeline and I already have other commitments, I’m practicing saying no because, with the way my brain works, I need to structure my life in a certain way to thrive. Sharing that out loud is building some confidence and clarity in this very moment for me. I have a fear of being misunderstood.

I’ve spent so much of my life trying to please people and put myself second so it’s uncomfortable for me when I say no to somebody or when I tell somebody that my needs require certain things that I’m afraid they won’t give me or provide. That also came up not with the client but with a partnership that I’ve been working on. There were a couple of big misunderstandings that didn’t reveal themselves to me until pretty late into the process of working together. Right before all this hyper fixation on travel started, I recognized one of these issues. It’s super late on a Sunday night and I discovered a huge misunderstanding. I paused and thought, “What is my first instinct in terms of how to handle this?”

It flowed out of me. I was constructing an email to address it and let it flow. I paused and re-read it. I did some editing and tried to make sure it was very clear, professional and as concise as possible. It was still a detailed email. I felt like all those details were important. I read it and thought, “There’s a chance that this will be misunderstood and misinterpreted. There’s also a chance that one of my fears will come to light, which is that I’m going to be perceived as high maintenance.”

That has happened as a theme throughout a number of these professional dynamics. Sometimes I think, “Is it because I’m a woman? Is it a gender issue, where commonly women are seen as high maintenance, bossy, bitchy or whatever else when they state their boundaries?” I think so. Patriarchally speaking, that’s a very possible situation. Although one of the people in these dynamics I referenced was another woman. I don’t know if that was fully the case.

Allow yourself to just show up as you are. It doesn't matter if some people don't like it. Click To Tweet

My fear of being too high maintenance came up. Where does that come from? A lot of that is the fact that I felt different from other people and I have different needs. For most of my life, people have said things to me like, “Nobody else has that need aside from you.” Saying that out loud is rough. The number of times I’ve either heard that almost verbatim or been conveyed to me was when I’ve said this is something I need and my needs have been denied because nobody else has requested them.

That’s a huge source of pain for me to go throughout my life thinking, “If nobody else needs it, there’s something wrong with me. If no one else stays up this late, there’s something wrong with me. If no one else sleepwalks and sleep talks, there’s something wrong with me. If no one else procrastinates and does eleventh-hour stuff as much as me.” I could list all of these instances in which I’ve either talked about it to other people and discovered they don’t have the same issues or needs or I’ve stated out loud something that I needed and have been met with blank stares or met with, “Sorry, we can’t do that because you’re the only one.”

This is why I feel so compelled and passionate about this neurodivergence journey. It’s because of understanding that but also knowing the accommodations I can legally ask for as a result of having special needs. It puts me in a place of empowerment, whereas I spent most of my life feeling the exact opposite like I’m not allowed to ask for these things, state these things and be a certain way because that’s not how other people are.

People-Pleasing And Being Okay With Silence

A lot of people, neurodivergent or not, have experienced some version of that. That seems to be a common human challenge of facing something over and over again where you feel like the odd one out, rejected, misunderstood, mocked, bullied or whatever else because what you need or who you are is different. It’s either we’re conditioned to try to be similar to each other or it’s a coping mechanism and in alignment with that is people pleasing like, “People seem unhappy with me when I ask for something. I’m not going to ask anymore. That way, I can keep them happy.”

I’ve noticed that I’ve had some challenges with clients and partners. I am trying not to get into this place of, “I’m no common denominator. Why is this all happening? It’s happened to me person after person.” What’s happening is I’m starting to find confidence in stepping outside of my comfort zone, asking for what I need, saying no and setting boundaries. It’s happening more frequently because this is new for me. It feels uncomfortable because it’s new for me. It’s unfamiliar.

 

It’s also bringing up the exact reasons why I haven’t done those things. It’s bringing up those old fears of, “When I asked for this years ago and got rejected, I’m afraid that I’m going to get rejected again. Years later, if I ask for the same thing, even though it’s a different person and situation and I’m a different person too, there’s still that fear that the past will replicate.” It’s interesting to bring these things to light in this coaching mentality of noticing, processing and sharing.

It’s also being okay with silence too. I’ve noticed I tend to want to fill in the silent gaps. I don’t want there to be too much silence because I associate silence with discomfort and awkwardness like something’s wrong. I need to step into it and be the person that makes everybody feel comfortable and keeps things flowing and good. The coaching training is also teaching me to slow down, be okay with silence, be okay with pacing, giving myself and the people that I’m talking with, the client that I’m working with, this space for answers to be revealed.

Pausing As Reflection

This is something I want to practice in the show, especially with guests. One of the first things I learned in this coaching training is to not listen for an opportunity to speak again for something else to say, to not be thinking of the next thing I want to say while the other person is talking. I do that because I’m afraid of the silence or a missed opportunity. I’m afraid to make someone uncomfortable. I want to embrace the silence more, the pauses more, the pondering and see what else comes up.

I’d love more opportunities to do that too, not just in my training but for the rest of my life. It’s super interesting. That’s part of mindfulness and meditation, that pausing and reflection. Pausing, in general, is big too. I’m looking forward to a lot of reflection and pausing over my road trip and the time I spend away. Even when I’m actively doing things, it puts my brain in a different space and has a chance to be more mindful. It’s interesting how there are a lot of familiar elements of road tripping, yet it’s going to be different because every moment is different.

I found myself having an interesting thought likely brought on by the continuous surge of COVID cases, Monkeypox and the recession. It feels like there’s one thing after another. There are a lot of challenges. I had a moment thinking, “What if I treated this next road trip as if it were my last?” It’s not in a morbid way but I have no idea if I’m going on another road trip in 2023 because so many factors could influence that.

The fear of being misunderstood because you’ve spent so much of your life trying to please people and put yourself second makes it uncomfortable to say ‘no’ to somebody. Click To Tweet

That also puts me in a place of gratitude to do this road trip with the factors that have come into play. First of all, I am grateful that I was very proactive about saving money. I saved up a pretty big chunk of money for this trip. That’s not something I may have ever done before, especially this amount. When I think about it, part of me is like, “I wish I could keep it in my savings account but I’m spending it mindfully and with joy for the next months.”

I feel proud of myself for saving it up. I’m taking those moments to acknowledge. Accomplishments are so key. I feel grateful that I have a functioning car to go on this road trip. I should double-check my car warranty. It’s something I kept meaning to look into. It might expire soon. It makes me a little nervous. My car is in good condition and I’m grateful for that. I don’t know if the weather will be on my side. There are wildfires and things like that. I’m taking it day by day. Choosing to be grateful for any day I get to enjoy on the trip but releasing expectations and attachment is an ongoing practice for me on my trips, also feeling gratitude for the friends and family I’m going to see along the way.

It feels like almost every day, I’ve touched base with a new person and found out that they’re available. I’m nervous, to be honest. Socializing feels very uncomfortable for me. I do not want to get sick. With Monkeypox, I feel so frustrated, sad and scared about it. I’m trying not to let that get in my way but I’m also trying to be mindful of it. Finding that balance is key. It feels already interesting to approach socializing as I will be seeing new people and going outside of my comfort zones in those cases.

There are still a ton of unknowns and that in itself has a space there. There’s an opportunity to pause and be mindful when you’re faced with the unknown. We’re constantly faced with the unknown. We never know what’s going to happen. Nothing’s truly predictable but this moment feels like there’s so much that I don’t know how it’s going to unfold. Speaking of gratitude and also referencing back the episode in which I was talking about my commonplace book, a journal that I’ve been adding to for years, I plan to read some more from that at some point. I’m not sure when but it’s a long digital journal. That’s not even accounting for all the physical journals I have laying around that I’ve been wanting to go back through for my reflection but perhaps would be useful to you as well.

I am thinking back in this moment of reflection on an episode I did right before I went on my road trip in May 2022. I remember before I left for that trip feeling anxious where there are a lot of familiar emotions I’m having. I was trying to process the fact that travel can lend itself to all little things not going quite right. That trip in May went almost flawlessly. I hope I can say the same after I do this next road trip but I’m not attached to saying the same, trying to stay in that flow state. I’m also trying to learn from my international trip in which I had an issue as I talked about when I went to Singapore on Philippine Airlines. In the episode in which I talked about Singapore and Fiji, I mentioned how I got to the airport to check in for my flight to Singapore and find out that my bag was too heavy.

 

I was so caught off guard because I thought I knew everything and was fully prepared and ready to go. That didn’t even occur to me as a possibility and yet it happens. Even though it was incredibly frustrating, stressful and anxiety-inducing for me at that time, in hindsight, I look back and think, “What a great lesson.” One thing I had to research was crossing the Canadian border. I can’t even tell you the last time I went to Canada, especially since I live in Los Angeles. It’s quite a ways away. I’m going into a few parts of Canada on this trip. It didn’t even occur to me to bring my passport. It’s so funny but thank goodness I have it. I came back from the other trip.

I packed it. I also discovered I need EV vaccination records for myself. You can’t go into Canada if you’re not fully vaccinated. One of my friends who lives in Canada hasn’t been able to leave the country because this person’s not fully vaccinated. That was true when I was traveling to the other countries I went to. Most, if not all of them, required it. I took it for granted because I’m vaccinated and it’s not a huge deal. What I hadn’t thought about is the process in which you show it.

Canada, much like the Philippines and Singapore, have a special app and you fill it out in advance. You show it when you go across the border. My friend was telling me about foods that aren’t allowed in Canada and all these extra considerations that hadn’t even occurred to me. I have to go in that flow state of trusting and that I’ve done enough research but knowing it’s possible that I could get to the border and be faced with some issue.

I could do all this preparation. I will likely spend every single day leading up to my departure date having those moments of hyper-focus on trip planning. I could total up all the time I’ve spent and it will probably be twenty-plus hours but I’m still going to come across some challenges. On that trip, on my way back from Costa Rica, I lost a baseball hat of mine. I mentioned it in one of these episodes.

At the time, I felt so disappointed with myself but I was able to reflect on something that happened in 2021 on my road trip when I was in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. I realized that I have left something behind in one of the Tesla charging stations. I had dropped this window shade that I like. It’s a piece of gear that is not crucial but important to me much like my hat. The hat wasn’t crucial. It wasn’t that special but I had an emotional connection to it. It felt important to me. I like wearing a baseball hat and I want to get another one.

Why are women seen as high maintenance, bossy, bitchy, or whatever else when they state their boundaries? Click To Tweet

These are two similar things that happened almost a year apart. When I was in Wyoming, it took me at least an hour to process the disappointment and frustration that I felt losing that window shade. I was deeply bombed. I might’ve even cried. I remember sitting there thinking, “Why is this so upsetting? It’s just this little window shade. I had another one at home.” I was only on the second day of this several-month-long trip thinking, “I won’t have this thing.” In hindsight, I’m back. I got my replacement. It’s not a big deal.

It taught me to double-check that I have everything before I leave. That was a good lesson. I don’t know how I lost the baseball hat. It was attached to one of my bags, not super securely. I thought I was being aware and I still lost that hat. I even went back. This happened on my flight back to Los Angeles from Costa Rica. I was back at the same airport in the same area a few hours later to fly to Singapore. I thought, “I’m going to get there and look all around. Maybe it’s lying on the floor somewhere in the airport in a corner. Maybe it’s at Lost and Found.” I spent twenty minutes looking at all the places that could have been thinking, “Maybe I’ll find that hat.” I didn’t.

It was a bummer but unlike 2021, I was able to let it go much faster. A few weeks later, I’m in a place of acceptance. I hope that the next time something like that happens, which is inevitable, I’ll be able to get over it and flow with it even faster. If I don’t, I can come back full circle and come into a place of acceptance, self-compassion and recognizing it’s okay if I feel stressed or anxious. It’s okay if I feel frustration, shame or any of those low emotions. If I can come to that place of acceptance for whatever I’m feeling and allowing it, that feels good to me, comforting and helpful. It also puts me in a place of practice where I can do that for others too.

It’s interesting. I was dreading this episode. I felt nervous, a little off and tired but I got into a state of flow with this episode that I wasn’t expecting. Hopefully, you felt some of that. If not, that’s okay too. It’s all okay. Do you know what I’m excited about? It’s not super unrelated. When I said the phrase, “It’s okay,” it reminded me of one of the favorite books I’ve read in 2021. It’s Okay Not To Be Okay is the title. It’s about grief. It’s a phenomenal book that taught me so much. I cannot wait to read more.

I’m getting one of those big cheekiest grins thinking about when I was reading that book, I was laying in the hammock at my parent’s house on a beautiful late summer, early fall evening. I hadn’t thought about that in so long. I’ve been so focused on getting across the country that I haven’t even thought about some of those blissful moments. Who knows if they’ll happen? None of that is guaranteed but I will likely be in that hammock reading a book and savoring it. I can’t wait.

Find confidence in stepping outside of your comfort zone, asking for what you need, saying ‘no,’ and setting boundaries. Click To Tweet

I always like to end the episode with gratitude for you reading and taking all this in but an invitation for you to do two things. 1) Reflect on things that are coming up for you. Even if you can’t fully relate to me, there’s got to be so many things that come up for you. 2) If you ever feel like sharing those things, I would be delighted to hear them, truly. Hearing from you is delightful. If you want to do that, there are a few different ways and it’s through email and social media direct message.

If for some reason I don’t respond, that means one of two things. 1) I’m overwhelmed and it often can take me a while to get back to people. 2) Somehow I missed it. If you ever want to follow up with me on an email or direct message, please never hesitate. I would appreciate that and/or you can join Beyond Measure. It’s that safe, private community of people that are interested in these topics and who love tuning into their self-awareness, noticing life and being mindful. We’ll be doing some of the assessments. We have beautiful, open conversations.

It’s so much like this show but in a live setting. If you choose not to reach out, that is okay, too. I want to say one more time, thank you for reading. I’m wishing you all the best. I’ll be back with that episode with Alexandra, assuming I’m on schedule. Things are always subject to change but the next episode is with Alexandra. I can’t wait to know what you think about that. I’m looking forward to that. Until next time. Wishing you all the very best.

 

Important Links

• Disconnect To Reconnect: Taking Stock of Life through a Retreat – Previous Episode
• Beyond Measure
• Parasomnia – Getting to the Bottom of my Sleep Disorder and Overcoming it – Previous Episode
• Solo Female Travel – Comfortably Uncomfortable – Previous Episode
• Escaping to the Jungle – What the Costa Rica Retreat was Like – Previous Episode
• It’s Okay Not To Be Okay

 

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