PLAGE ISOLEE (Soleil couchant) by Polo & Pan

We discussed prayer and meditation techniques in depth in the last post.  For this post I’d like to stress the importance of the Cardio High.  Notice, the song I wrote this post too is on my “New High” playlist via Spotify @Dianeski22.  This is one of my most favorite songs to run to and has an amazing intro that gets you hyped about all your favorite running fantasies.

Running fantasies are real.

Running fantasies are associated with the Runner’s High.  When a person is running without knowing they are running anymore, they have entered the runner’s zone which brings forth the runner’s high.  During this time, a runner is flooded with images, thoughts, and solutions to their daily lives as well as dreams and fantasies about the future.  It feels blissful, calming, consistent and overall transforms the brain for the better.  These fantasies that occur are actually deep-rooted goals that you have been either fulfilling subconsciously or are afraid to admit to yourself.  For some of us, who use running or working out as a way to become aware of these goals, we use running fantasies adamantly as part of our daily hustle.

Some fantasies I’ve had in the past while running:  performing in front of others (stage presence and music was involved), working in coffee, playing pool in eclectic and interesting bars, learning how to go out by myself in big cities, teaching in front of a room full of students, living in Los Angeles, teaching in the inner city, living somewhere cold and cozy, writing a book, writing comedy, singing in front of an audience, owning my own coffee shop and bar.

All of these have come true, by the way, or are in progress.

Combined with prayer & meditation as well as writing, you can bring these fantasies to the forefront, and constantly work on them.  “Working on them” is NOT a passive phrase, so don’t take that lightly.

Working on your fantasies means accepting whether these passions align with what you believe you are on earth for, admitting that they will happen, accepting the path or the work to make it happen, and teaching yourself how to enjoy the process of making these fantasies a reality.

Therefore, CARDIO is the first step of Daily Bloomified.  You have to stimulate and activate your mind to allow yourself to see, trust, pray, meditate, feel, and accept these fantasies.

With only 30 minutes of cardio, you allow yourself to bring these fantasies – these true callings – to the surface, fearlessly.

This is why The Bloom Effect, or the structure for how I write, revolves around choosing the song that most inspired you while you were working out.  This song is half of the clue and encouragement for getting these fantasies out of you and into your forefront where you can look at it soberly sort of speak, then eventually write about it to yourself to ensure that you have chosen to make it part of your reality.

Each and every step of Daily Bloomified is well thought out and connects to one another in

this way.  The transition from 30 Minutes of Cardio is meant to seamlessly draw you into prayer & meditation by nature, followed by the writing portion which helps you apply what you’ve discovered to your daily life.  This routine, though you may think you do not have enough time to accomplish it all consistently everyday, will be there for you when you are ready to harness your truest yearning for joy.  Sure, you can split it up into days, but then it won’t have the same powerful effect that you are looking for.

This routine has been crafted and shared with anyone who is willing to identify the true joys of life.  Most of us are afraid of joy.  We are afraid to see what happens if we commit to something that could make our lives EVEN better, make us emotionally more stable, make us put our faith into something bigger, make us worry less about the media or superficial wants.  This type of self discovery overall benefits not just us, but everyone we share our lives with.  You will notice, after focusing on yourself for this consistent amount of time, life with your loved ones is easier, less stressful, and more organized.  Daily Bloomified allows you to get to know yourself on a different level and it is one of the truest joys you could ever choose.

Once, while in an intense prayer session overlooking Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, I had this overwhelming sense of comfort and guidance spelled out for me, “Do not be afraid to get everything you’ve ever wanted.”  At first, I didn’t like the words “wanted” or “get everything.”  I spent 4 years analyzing what this phrase meant to me and it wasn’t until I consistently allowed myself to ruminate this phrase through the lense of my faith, running passion, and writing did I see that these words aligned with every part of my life and relationship with God.  Through Daily Bloomified, I was able to dissect this phrase and benefit from what it was actually teaching me.  It took me down a path of utter trust in God and the people I had met along the way.  It allowed me to completely heal from my past, learn how to enjoy the present, and bravely answer to the callings of the future.  It takes a lot of time and energy to focus on yourself, but what the world has in store for you and what you have in store for yourself are two different things.  Just a hint, the truest want reveals the truest joy you can ever experience.

Whether you are single, a mother, a father, a student, an athlete, divorced, widowed, or just trying to understand life, Daily Bloomified allows you to build a strong relationship to what you value most in life.  It allows you to bring everything to the surface, cleanse yourself, re-identify, and affirm.

These types of skills and benefits allow you to see into your soul, bringing you closer to your loved ones, closer to your own yearnings and purpose in life, leaving you radiant, more productive, insightful, patient, and understanding of this world.

Do not be afraid to commit to the workout.  It is the first step, and the most crucial toward accepting a life you are only afraid of because it is overwhelmingly joyful.  Our society is not used to joy.  Why not try it on for a moment and make your own decision of whether you can get used to it or not?

U GOT MY HEART by Clement Leroux, Emma Hoet

Now that we understand the order and construct of Daily Bloomified’s routine, let’s look deeper into each step of the routine, beginning with Step 2:  Prayer and Meditation.

Step 1:  30 Minutes Cardio

Step 2:  30 Minutes Prayer/Meditation

Step 3:  Writing (1 Journal Entry or Blog Post of minimum 3 Paragraphs)

I have received a lot of questions and calls pertaining to learning how to meditate or pray.  In this post I will provide a plethora of options for how to pray or meditate for 30 minutes each day.  This also happens to be one of my favorite skills to teach as it has deeply enriched and calmed my life.  I would like to first discuss meditation and the ranging versions of meditating that are available.

Meditation

I have read countless books on meditating and methods of clearing one’s energy.  Back

when I lived in Santa Monica, Venice and Manhattan Beach, I had the chance to explore the world of meditation first hand.  I will mention specific strategies I use to bring myself to a place of clarity, peace and understanding.  However, the tab in Bloomified’s blog “Feed Your Spirit” has a long list of places and literature to dive into, which allow you to meditate or nurture the meditation lifestyle.

To start, here are a few options for learning how to meditate:

1. Use a book.
2. Use nature.
3. Use silence.
4. Go to a meditation class or meditation session.

When I first dove into meditating, I read the following books to guide the process.  I attended a meditation class in the evening at Mystic Journey Bookstore on Abbott Kinney in Venice, and I attended two hour silent meditation sessions every Friday at Lake Shrine off Sunset in the Malibu/Pacific Palisades area.  I will save the Christina/Catholic references of meditating for the Prayer section that is to follow. Note:  All books or places in this post have a link connected to the title so that you can order the book or go to the place mentioned if you wish (also these links are available in the Feed Your Spirit tab above).

BOOKS READ/RESEARCHED

1. Meditation Bible
2. Developing Intuition
3. Creative Visualization
4. Soul Lessons and Soul Purpose:  A Channeled Guide to Why You Are Here
5. Ask Your Guides
6. The Answer is Simple:  Love Yourself, Live Your Spirit!
7. Spiritual Growth:  Being Your Higher Self
8. The Complete Book of Chakra Healing
9. Your Aura and Your Chakras:  The Owner’s Manual
10. The Leap:  The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening
11. Clearing Spaces

The list above is a pretty solid place to start.  There are many more of course, but starting from the top and going down you can use these books as part of your actual meditation/prayer time.  In the books above you will learn the following essential tactics for meditating:

1. How to release negative energy daily and in a short amount of time.
2. How to forgive and send others love, who either need it or who you are thinking about constantly.
3. How to create a bright and positive aura – or in other words, how to cleanse yourself of anything you are holding onto in order to live your life in an honest way.
4. How to focus on a higher power that you believe in (God, angels, guides, spiritual goodness).
5. How to develop a sense of self that leans not on an egocentric mindset, but rather a will to do good in this world.
6. How to listen and not be distracted.
7. How to feed yourself joy for small spurts at a time.
8. How to build endurance of sitting quietly for short to long periods of time.
9. How to focus on a quiet, calm place within you in order to face the realities of your day.
10. How to ask questions and get answers from a place of trust and love.
11. How to visualize your life in a way that speaks to you, provides answers & clarity, and assists you in pursuing your own goals.

Simple tips for the 30 minute meditating process:

1. Choose a quiet, undisturbed place in nature or in your house.
2. Begin by reading one chapter of a meditating book of your choice.
3. Sit with your eyes closed, palms open, chin tilted slightly up, and legs in criss-cross applesauce position or sitting at the edge of the bed or chair with feet on the ground.
4. Feel your breath and breathe consistently for about 60 seconds, taking note of inhaling and exhaling in a rhythmic way.
5. Once your breathing is in motion, allow yourself to sit in silence in this position for the remaining 30 minutes.
6. **Begin here as this is the base for letting meditation do its own work.  Do not worry about the thoughts that seep in.  Simply force yourself to sit here for the remaining 30 minutes.
7. As you progress, and do this more often, start to ask questions to yourself and sit in silence to wait for answers.  Answers of clarity and guidance come visually or in auditory form for most people.
8. Consistently do this for 30 minutes each day for you to get results.
9. Results will strengthen and become easier to achieve with each day.
10. Play meditative spa or yoga music in the background as you get better at meditating, but make sure to meditate silently throughout the week as well.
11. Lighting a candle and sitting it in front of you as you meditate or burning essential oils/incense provides a calming and trusting atmosphere as well, and enhances the meditating experience.

PRAYER

Whether you are a person of faith or not, prayer is accessible to everyone.  Prayer has

deeply enhanced my meditating experiences because it is connecting to a form of faith.  Similar to the process I previously explained for meditating, I will provide you with books to enrich the 30 Minute Prayer session.  Additionally, within the Christian/Catholic community are very specific forms of prayer that I will explain toward the end of this post.  These forms of prayer are incredible; they never fail you and provide the utmost comfort, reprieve of pain, and complete clarity on the goodness of life.  Remember, prayer IS meditating.  However, prayer is more powerful and allows you to release your ego completely.

BOOKS READ/USED DURING PRAYER

1. The Bible (New Testament for beginners, or The Promise Bible)
2. Mere Christianity
3. The Jesuit Guide to {almost} Everything
4. Mother Teresa:  No Greater Love
5. In the Heart of the World by Mother Teresa
6. The Screwtape Letters
7. Interior Castle by St. Teresa de Avila
8. A Simple, Life-Changing Prayer: Discovering the Power of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Examen
9. The Spiritual Exercises
10. The Daily Examen (St. Ignatius of Loyola Website)
11. How to Pray the Rosary
12. Resisting Happiness

Using the books/literature above to guide your prayer is very helpful when first learning how to pray.  Here are some methods for using the above mentioned suggestions, broken up into the following categories:  Scripture, Saints, Daily Reflection, and The Rosary.

SCRIPTURE

1.  Lectio Divina:  Lectio Divina is a form of prayer that allows you to achieve 4 phases of

   

   prayer by focusing on portion of scripture.  Go to the link to learn all the specifics, but in a nutshell, you do the following.  You first, choose a small portion of scripture from the Bible.  You read it as a form of meditation.  Then, you choose a part of the scripture that speaks to you and repeat this part of the scripture to yourself over and over allowing yourself to submit yourself to a state grace and vulnerable listening.  Finally, you enter INTO the scripture through deep contemplation.  In the secular world, this method of entering into a scene is similar to transcendental meditation.  However, that is not to undermine the complete holiness of what occurs during deep contemplation; this comparison is to only point out the closest concept to it that exists outside of Christianity.

2. Ignatian Spirituality:  Spiritual Exercises:  You can attend a retreat where you are able to learn the Spiritual Exercises more in depth, or you can go to this link and explore ways to incorporate the Spiritual Exercises into your daily scripture or prayer time.  St. Ignatius was a teacher and he created specific ways to connect to the Catholic Faith using very specific tactics.  When reading scripture, he puts emphasis on the ability to contemplate scripture, not just read it.  It is called Ignatian Contemplation.  Ignatian Contemplation teaches you how to use the Gospels and your imagination in order to be fully present during a time in Jesus’ life.  This process allows you to communicate with God on a very personal level involving all the senses: taste, smell, sounds, sights feelings.  This has been one of the most powerful forms of prayer for me and has uprooted me from lowest times in my life.  It has also guided every transition in my life, filled me with firm hope and understanding of how to trust God in my life.

SAINTS

1. Reading a book written by and Saint or about a Saint is completely therapeutic and life altering.  A place to start is simply reading about a Saint per day.  There are many facets for attaining this kind of information.  The following links will take you to a list of all the Saints.  From there you can research more about their early life and understand how each Saint was very “unperfect” in so many ways before they submitted their life to and for God.  Reading about the Saints is a great way to feel empathy and draw parallels to your current pain or journey.  Their pain, doubt and confusion is similar to what we today are periled with.  This would be a good way to pray or meditate for 30 minutes – just reading about a specific Saint’s life and learning about the twists and curves of their choices that led them to a life of complete holiness.
2. Websites:  Saints A to Z
3. Books:  Saints for Dummies, (fun one for outside of reflection:  Drinking with the Saints:  Sinner’s Guide to a Holy Happy Hour)
4. If you are Catholic, starting with your Confirmation Saint Name is a personal and safe place to begin diving into deep reflection with the Saints.  My Catholic Saint Name is Saint Teresa de Avila, I went to Loyola Marymount University (St. Ignatius of Loyola), I moved to Santa Monica (Saint Monica), and I felt a calling to pursue sisterhood with Mother Teresa’s order Missionaries of Charity.  Through my natural connection to each Saint, I decided to dive deeper and learn about them.  Through learning about them, I learned how to pray and began a relationship with God that I did not have before.

DAILY REFLECTION

1. The Examen by St. Ignatius of Loyola can be implemented quickly during your 30

   

   minutes of prayer and meditation.  It is a quick and simple way to reflect about the day, thank God for your blessings, forgive yourself for anything you have done, and be filled with the grace to look at tomorrow with hope and comfort.  The steps in short are the following, or visit the website in the link at the beginning of this paragraph:  Become aware of God’s presence, Replay the day and thank God for the each specific blessing, Ask for forgiveness for something you fell short of or are sorry for, Notice when you felt God throughout the day and where you paused, Think of tomorrow and what do I see ahead or in what spirit do I enter tomorrow as?  The Examen is also available on Spotify now!  I have used this on my breaks at work when I needed extra rejuvenation to get through the day:  The Examen with Father James Martin, S.J.

2. The Prayer Process by Matthew Kelly:  Matthew Kelly, inspired by St. Ignatius of Loyola created “The Prayer Process.”  It is the last page of his book, Resisting Happiness, mentioned as #12 in the above list of books to read or use during prayer and meditation.  The Prayer Process is a reflective set of questions and mediative practice that allows you to get answers and peace from the current day.  His steps revolve around the following:  Gratitude, Awareness, Significant Moments, Peace, Freedom, Other Intentions, The Our Father.  You can watch or learn more about this process through the following link:  The Prayer Process and Matthew Kelly’s Session 4 “The Prayer Process”.

THE ROSARY

1.  I have never felt more grace and peace from any other form of prayer than The Rosary.    That is not to say that every single time I pray The Rosary it is the most perfect feeling in the world.  I have prayed The Rosary during times of gratitude, confusion, loss, despair, blessing, and pain.  Each time I pray it, the experience is unique – but always necessary.  It brings me great joy to share The Rosary with anyone who is even remotely curious and there are SO many websites, videos, audiobooks, and books in general that could teach you much more.  Once I began praying The Rosary consistently, I witnessed more joy than I ever thought I would in my life.  It became a very personal and intimate part of my relationship with God as I am sure many others who pray The Rosary can attest to.  When I went to Greece, I came back with a Rosary from the land where Jesus’ apostles spread the first days of the Good News; I was forever moved.  I then decided that wherever I traveled to, I would purchase a Rosary and feel comfort in the fact that I can find The Rosary wherever I go.  To learn more about The Rosary and how to pray it, please visit the following link:  How to Pray the Rosary.
2. Guided Rosary:  Spotify also has guidance on how to pray the rosary and there are several apps that can step by step take you through the process.  The app I currently use is free and very simple.  Go to applications in your phone and type in:  The Catholic Rosary.

GET STARTED

I hope this post is one that you can constantly go back to and get ideas from.  There are SO many more methods of prayer and meditation, but this at least provides you with a solid foundation for getting started and filling your 30 minutes with as much closeness and solitude as you can possibly get.  Sometimes I start with a self-help book I am reading at the time, or a Catholic related piece of literature.  Then, I meditate and allow myself to get quiet and connected.  Finally, I either write down my prayers in my journal, say them out loud, or use scripture to help myself navigate through my prayers subconsciously.  The point is, you can mix it up and utilize every piece of this post to be ACTIVELY PRAYING OR MEDITATING for the entire 30 minutes.

ENJOY!

GIVING UP THE GUN by Vampire Weekend

I happen to be teaching this method of Daily Bloomified’s morning routine as I too am going through a rough patch.  Funnily enough, that coincidence is proving to me more and more how much I can trust the process of completing that morning 30 minutes of cardio, followed by 30 minutes of prayer/meditation and topped off with an entry of journaling or posting a blog.

It is amazing because I have been a teacher my entire life and only through writing does the bulk of the teaching come alive.  Meaning, when you teach in person to a crowd, you learn quickly that it doesn’t matter how you teach it, how you deliver the information, or even your relationship with your audience.  What matters is if the audience CHOOSES to be engaged.

You learn this the hard way as a teacher.

You are pumped, young, creative, endlessly intelligent.  You seem like Mary Poppins to your

crew, just pulling ideas out of thin air and making your audience for a split second buy into what you’re selling.  But as time goes on and data proves, people only internalize what you teach them if they WANT to learn – if they want to embrace the details.

When teaching coffee, I had a similar revelation.  An infamous trainer in the Australian coffee industry just enlightened me the other day, as I had the chance to be taught by him and learn from his training session on Bar-Flow & Customer Service.  He said, “We’ve learned a lot today.  We’ve dissected extraction and I’ve shown you the most efficient and quickest habits to master pumping drinks out in 1 minute or less, but you each will only retain about 10% of what I said today.  And it all comes down to you exhibiting that 10%, him exhibiting his 10%, and her sharing her 10% once I’m gone.  Then, hopefully, one of you will take the reins and be the leader in which you reinforce this process everyday.”

I felt like I was listening to myself.  These are the types of truths you come to know as a teacher, but cannot explain to anyone else.  In the coffee industry, I was able to be one of those humans who took the reins and reinforced everything I was being taught.  It was amazing.  Almost too perfect, to where you realize how good it feels to bring to life something that not only you can teach, but you internalize at the same time.  You start wishing that everyone you knew (outside of coffee) cared as much as you.

But guess what?  You are not alone.  There are actually many more people out there who are great learners.  Who care about the details.  Who want to improve their own lives whether they are in an UP or a DOWN, or just CHILLIN in the middle.

 

 

I know this because the audience for ALL writers are people who WANT to learn.  They are choosing to read what you’ve discovered or created.

You cannot see them, and the audience does not know each other, but they are out there

internalizing what they came to learn.  Practicing what they are choosing to preach.  Believing in something for themselves by living it out.

And this is why writing is so powerful.  Sure, on the day to day, there are a million people who refuse to change, or see the world any different.  Worse, there are people in your own family who are in fact in straight up denial about all of their mishaps and more.  But they do not want to learn like you.  They choose not to internalize.  And that is their own dismay.

YOU came to learn. And you came to learn so that you could live it out.  And when you live it out, you are TEACHING by example.

So you see?  The 3rd Step of Daily Bloomified is extremely important.  It takes all the glory home in one quick swoop.  When you write, you pull together every truth that you have begun to solidify in your mind and heart. You create affirmations just by writing.  That’s what writing is!  One huge affirmation.  We call this entire process of understanding transformed into fluid practice, internalization.  If you can write out the truths for yourself, then you can teach it to others or live by example for anyone else looking for a hopeful mentor.

If you were to do this every day, then these affirmations – these writing sessions – become

culminating factors in your ability to overcome obscene amounts of stress, negativity, disagreements, family issues, friend drama, career choices … the list could go on.

Only when all three steps are committed to in a consistent way, does Daily Bloomified really pay off.  It usually takes a full cycle: Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 for Daily Bloomified to reveal its strength.  When you feel its strength, you unveil the knowledge that you’ve had all along.  You unleash the truest you, and you are that much more motivated to repeat the cycle.  Thus, Daily Bloomified is a daily routine.

Enjoy Daily Bloomified!  I will be posting consistently as well with more insight into each of the 3 Steps of this specifically crafted, yet very simple routine.  I know that you will find what you are looking for, as it has had great healing affects on my own life and brought me closer to who I truly am in this world.

With Much Love & Much Hope,

Diane

AS IF BY MAGIC by La Roux

Running this morning was tormenting, for fear I was so frustrated that I wouldn’t connect

to a song in my morning workout.  I was livid about some family problems and feared the anger would consume me, causing me to completely miss out on the benefits of the workout entirely.  But that’s what the workout is for, remember?  Imagine if I didn’t work out this morning with that kind of anger and frustration built up inside?  I realized that this is the hardest part about trusting the routine, facing our doubts.  Which brings to mind one of the central, early struggles with implementing a new routine: wanting to control every aspect of its progress.  We begin to question if our process is already working or if it will work and when it will start working?  We immediately want to give up and try something new for fear we are already not getting what we wanted out of it.

We start to beg for signs or data that could somehow prove we are on the right track, that it is helping our daily lives.  Sound familiar?  Yes.  Sounds exactly like the process of life.  Sounds like when we doubt our motives or decisions in life and we begin to feel lost, as if we don’t even know ourselves anymore.  When this kind of negativity takes over it could get the best of you, but then, “as if by magic” the routine sparks a tiny sliver of hope in you.  Maybe the right song comes on during your workout – the one that lures you into the realm of trust, hope, faith, and belief.  Just when you thought Daily Bloomified wasn’t going to work?  Or maybe it isn’t the song that wins you over.  For me this morning it was, but sometimes it’s just the peace that comes over me after morning cardio, or the fact that I am able to notice the little things again, like an uplifting breeze shaking the trees’ leaves as if trying to tell me to “hold on and just enjoy.” This topic of struggle and doubt suits today as I would like to stress the importance of Step 2 in Daily Bloomified: Prayer/Meditation.

Prayer and meditation is the doubt crusher.

Morning cardio sparks in us the motivating energy to continue the routine every morning, but what keeps us in it for the long haul?  Prayer and meditation.  Prayer and meditation is the platform for taking what we’ve brought to the surface during our morning workout and drawing out solidified truths of comfort, and trust.  Through prayer and meditation we are able to find the words, the answers, and the affirmation to articulate these findings in our morning routine.  The comfort we get from these answers then translates into HOPE.  And hope is what inevitably makes us more open to the possibilities of life.  Remember, hope eliminates fear and breaks down boundaries of false truths from our upbringing or past experiences.  Hope is everything we need from this entire process of Daily Bloomified, thus positively affecting every part of our decision making, career choices, passions, and direction in life.

When we are hurt, struggling, or filled up with negativity it is hard to hold steady with our routine.  But just like how we put faith in ourselves, in God, in a higher being or belief, we learn to LET GO and allow the hard work to pay off.  You are already doing the work by starting this routine, so let it do its part and give back to you what you are asking for.  Let it show you the answers you are seeking.  It’s like when you put 100% into applying to a bunch of different jobs and just when you think no one is going to call back, 4 or 5 call you a couple weeks later asking if you can come in for an interview.  Your simple choice and submission to do the work to better your way of living and thinking will play out in a positive way, if you just let it.  Don’t try to control it, instead, TRUST it.

By praying and meditating consistently every single day for 30 minutes we become more patient with life’s results; we are teaching ourselves to stop forcing out the results we want in the time that we want them.  By practicing the skill of praying and meditating every day, you learn how to see into your life, understand it, and guide it out of love instead of anxious fear.  That’s why it always feels good when we do pray or meditate.  That sense of peace is just YOU letting go of all the lies or misconceived notions about life.  It’s as if we get a chance to look at our own life from an aerial view and finally see how beautiful it is.  It’s not messy or confusing or painful and monotonous like we thought it was.  It’s not hopeless, stuck in a rut, or passionless, like we keep telling ourselves.  Instead it’s full of the answers we are looking for.  Full of knowledge and honest signs of how to enjoy it if we’d like to.  But it’s true, we must learn to let go in order to see all of these happy and hopeful answers.  Prayer and meditation bring these answers to life, FOR YOU.

Step 3 is the writing and reflection portion.   Tomorrow we will go more into how after basking in the comfort of the benefits of prayer and mediation, we are able to understand the answers we have received.  Through understanding, we find peace which most of the time sparks new ideas, creativity, courage, and the will to take action in our lives.

DESTROYER by Panama

DAILY  BLOOMIFIED is constructed very specifically as a routine foundation.  Meaning, sure, if you are able to do these three tasks every single day, with cardio and prayer/meditation in the morning before work, plus writing any time after that, then you are more prone to increasing your level of workouts per day, reading more books related to your meditation and prayer seshes, or writing different forms of works beyond journaling.  What I love about Daily Bloomified though, is that once you are able to do the first step, the rest comes naturally.  We all know how excruciating it feels to wake up to that alarm clock and face the fact that we actually have to get up out of bed to get the cardio part done.  This morning, even though I have trained for marathons, and woken up early as a teacher and barista for most my life, I still struggle to answer to the alarm that rips my literal dreams and subconscious apart.  We writhe in pain by the thought of having to face the day; and ironically enough, the more normal the day, the more unwilling we are to face it.

But no.  This morning I wasn’t going to let the the thoughts ruin me OR this blog post.  I remembered, for a flicker of a second, how much I love that feeling of being at the gym so early in the morning, seeing the sunrise while everyone else is asleep, feeling the crisp, cool morning air while I drive with the window down to the gym, barely awake.  These memories are what force me to get up: these memories and these feelings.  For others it might be just the sense of accomplishment or the people you meet while working out.  But for me, it is the serenity and hope that I feel from being in my own world, running alone.

The remembrance of this world unknown to others is what makes my morning workout feel special.  That specialness lures me out of bed, outweighing all the other thoughts and emotions from that typical morning paranoia.  This is what I believe makes morning workouts perfect for Step 1.  Morning workouts are that lure to get you going and they inspire you everyday to maintain the routine.  In some ways, you are now emotionally attached to the First Step of the day.  It’s as if there have been tiny drops of irreplaceable feelings associated with morning cardio dropped into that First Step.  Scientifically, yes the endorphins are unforgettable and they transform your brain.  But that’s not what you’re thinking of in the morning when you’re pressed to get up; that’s not what you’re able to identify when you’re groggy and fighting to take that first step out of bed.  Instead, you lie there replaying and reliving all the FEELINGS you had when you worked out the day before, to convince you to do it all over again.  Accompanying those feelings are visions from the morning before as well. Visions of the previous day’s workout, to remind us of how good it was to start the day with morning cardio. These tiny feelings and hopeful remembrances are now within you and the beautiful thing is they stay with you forever, even after doing the workout JUST ONCE.  This is why it is more likely for many to pick up routines again later down the road in life – their emotional impact is almost greater than the physical.

Despite my love for the outdoors, I have found that the EASIEST way to get my butt moving and inspired for the day is to just keep things simple and go to the gym.  At the gym, I have no choice, whereas when I go outside, I immediately get distracted by how beautiful everything is.  I’ll start praying, crying, listening, writing and thanking God for everything.  Then, next thing you know, it’s time to go to work and all I’ve done is complain or give thanks. Not to say these tasks are not important or inevitable in life, but they are best confronted after being shaken up by morning cardio and put into perspective alongside the endorphins you get from visualizing your life while working out.  Therefore, after a looooooot of trial and error, I’ve discovered that for me, when I go to the gym and stick to the same exact machine/class, then I KNOW I will be working out for exactly 30 minutes straight and the task is done.  No thinking, no bargaining, no way of getting out of it.  I just show up and jump in.

Now, if you have your own version of the gym outdoors or you are powerful enough to do your cardio routine outside to start the day or in your house without getting distracted by the world or your thoughts, go for it!  But for some of us, if we make this first step as EASY as possible, then the rest of the routine will just get done without a fight.  Not to mention, if you work out at the gym in the wee hours of the morning, your body will naturally crave to workout AGAIN but this time outside and probably later in the day.  But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet.  We want to make sure Step 1 gets done for now.

As most of you know, it takes about a month for something to become a habit. But, a routine is not a habit. How about this thought:  It only takes 7 days for you to get attached to doing something you like. Where the keyword is ATTACHED.  Routines are different from habits and here’s why:

Routines are built in emotionally to your way of living.

Like making coffee.  You wake up and you feel emotionally attached to this cup of coffee, or

even down to how you brew it.  For some, it is the only quiet moment they get before their kids wake up, or before they head into a grueling day of work and pressure.  Just you and your coffee; the quiet haven of hope for you to get ready and face the day.  Whereas, washing your hands just has to happen after you go to the bathroom.  This is a good habit for many reasons, but you are not emotionally attached to it, or at least you don’t have to be.  It has been drilled into you since you were little, by your parents or guardians.

A routine is a choice to adhere to; it is a specific way of living and a GATEWAY for growing more into your passions.

Therefore, routines can be created out of anything you truly enjoy!  That is the cool thing about routines.  We can manipulate them so that they feed our souls exactly how we want them to be fed.  They encourage us to be more of ourselves, or they serve a purpose in self-discovery and contentment, like this one: Daily Bloomified.  So, if the routine has running in it, then you will most likely be compelled to train for a half marathon one day or a full marathon.  This is obviously more challenging than just 30 minutes of running in the morning (30 minutes is usually around 3 miles btw).  Or if your form of prayer is sitting in nature quietly for 30 minutes, then you might sign up for a silent weekend retreat one day in Santa Barbara or Hawaii!  You see, Daily Bloomified is simply a foundation, but with built in reinforcements for however you wish to grow, in a hopeful and consistent manner.

And that is exactly what is lacking in our lives – the secret ingredient about routines – consistency and hope.

We get excited about something, but we don’t follow through.  We have a million ideas of what we want to do or what we want to pursue, but we don’t go at it consistently.  We think of different passions and hobbies, but we are afraid to make them a part of who we truly are.  Daily Bloomified is a foundation for teaching you how to beat those odds.  It provides you with 3 simple steps that are constructed to pull out of you your deepest desires, your truest identity, your honest cravings in this life.  It teaches you along the way how to live them out and admit that they are a part of your journey.

How is Daily Bloomified able to do this?  Well, it consists of the three main components to living a joyful life:  endorphins, alone time, and reflection (cardio, prayer/meditation, and writing) respectively.  When you are able to learn joy, you are able to live life unafraid of what you wish to be and what you wish to accomplish.  

Joy eliminates fear, paranoia, anxiety, low self-esteem, and doubt.  Joy keeps you focused on what you believe in as the center of the choices you make.  Joy inspires you to choose to live life instead of stand by.  Joy diminishes all inner aching and unleashes your true spirit.  Daily Bloomified can help you create this joy for yourself.

Daily Bloomified is a launchpad for people to find joy, understand it, own it, and use it the way we were all meant to use it in this world.

Let’s see what happens and what comes to the surface on Day 3!

THE FUTURE (featuring Antony, Cleopatra) by Motez, Antony, Cleopatra

Daily Bloomified is a new project I am working on to show how we self-coach the day-to-day throughout EVERY single chapter of life.  Whether you are the underdog right now, on top of the world, or in a transition feeling insecure about the path ahead, Daily Bloomified will kick-start an internal routine that is less likely to end because it becomes a part of who you are.

We all know how helpful it is to have a routine of some sort, but sometimes we lose interest in it, or we doubt that it is working.  Most of these failing routines revolve around external motivation, but I have created a very, simple set of 3 daily tasks based on the research I have analyzed over the past 10 years.  I have used this routine to overcome great adversity, face life experiences (both negative and positive), and to attract the next step in fulfilling my dreams and purpose in life.  This is what I have come to know about this routine:

It protects you from the overwhelming negativity that surrounds, instills a consistent perspective of hope, and helps you attract all the opportunities you are truly seeking.

Overall, Daily Bloomifed maintains a healthy and positive mindset for whatever is to come and for whatever chapter of life you are enduring.  This routine ignites the inner belief to pursue life in the way that is most honest to your heart.  Daily Bloomified is something you can do every single day, no matter how you feel or what you think when you wake up in the morning.

Not only will I be teaching this routine daily through my blog, but I will be executing it alongside you.  You can’t coach the team without running with them, right?  So here we go!  The three steps to the routine are stated below, followed by some stipulations:

DAILY BLOOMIFIED

1. 30 Minutes of Cardio
2. 30 Minutes of Prayer/Meditation
3. Writing (1 Blog Post, 1 Journal Entry)

** Stipulation 1:  The first 2 steps must be done immediately after you wake up in the morning to start your day and the 3rd step can be completed any time before dinner.  The 3rd Step “Writing” must consist of 3 paragraphs minimum, written alongside any song from your morning cardio workout.  I suggest playing the song on repeat to keep those vibes going – that is how I write and edit my blog posts.  This blog entry has been written alongside the song that most affected me this morning, while I allowed the Runner’s High to encompass every part of my being.  I will be writing a blog post every day as I complete Daily Bloomified, sharing with you the insight and uplifting changes I experience along the way.

**Stipulation 2:  You can choose 1 day off per week (where 1 week = 7 days).  On this day, feel free to not do any of the 3 steps.  For the remaining days, all 3 steps need to be completed in order to keep the mindset and heart-set going strongly.

******************************************************************

I would like to keep this entry short as it is the kick-off to DAILY BLOOMIFIED.  If you need ideas for music in the AM, you can follow my workout playlists on Spotify @Dianeski22.  The following playlists are great for visualizing your dreams while working out or catalyzing  your inner creative muse:

1. ALL GOOD
2. All The Time
3. New High
4. Trance Running
5. Positive Reflection
6. Visual Running EC

Have fun, and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Lonely Road by The Sandals

Growing up I used to love staying at the beach until the sun set.  After being in the water all day, this is the perfect time to go back in for a nice long dip.  The waves are rolling again, the water temp feels warm as your body has almost grown another layer of skin while you lay on the sand post morning sesh, acclimating.

For me, this time of day brings clarity as well.  As I watch the sun descend upon the horizon, my entire day flashes before my eyes.  I catch myself naturally thanking God for everything amazing that happened.  I also find that peace and understanding of owning up to where, how or why I tripped up where I did and if I did.  I make amends and let it all go, looking forward to the next day.

Might as well be the ocean’s way of igniting St. Ignatius’ Examen, one that I am very fond of  fundamentally as well.

But growing up, I didn’t have any formal way of examining my day or even knowing what to do after getting the answers I needed from the sunset, or from the cool breeze coming by with that hopeful spirit.  As a child, we just take in the goodness without question.  Growth is a lot like this in some way.  We learn to accept those inner truths a lot faster.  We realize, we no longer wish to doubt or guess – we simply know now.

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately, and writing less.  I have been taking the time to truly enjoy all the best memories I’ve had in life.  I’ve come to this place I never thought I’d get to before dying, to be honest.

Post trauma, post anxious youngster days, post arguing with the world about what is right and wrong.  Now, everything feels like Dusk.  Everyday feels like when the waves have calmed down, and the sun is almost gone.  Everyday feels like the ocean is calling me to take one last dip before going home.

I no longer have to almost cry when I say goodbye to the waves, because we are reunited again as I am back on the west coast.  And even more importantly, I am back in the land where this blog began.  Back where I grew up, where I lost at love the first time around, where I picked myself up, found out who I truly was, and bravely decided to grab life around the neck like when you give someone the biggest hug.

Dusk it is.  The certainty of dusk.  The moment you get all the answers you need from this

day.  The tranquility of your mind and heart become one, finally (beautiful sigh), and you no longer argue with yourself and the world.

This inner peace has now led me to be able to pursue some of my biggest dreams I’ve had on the docket.  Nothing is standing in the way, nothing except that beautiful blue horizon saying, “Come take another dip Diane, come jump in the water and play again before you go to sleep.”

FOR THOSE NEEDING SOME OF DUSK’S WISDOM TONIGHT, “At Dusk – Truth Bombs”:

1.  Goodness is what we are here for.
2. The wind has a voice.
3. Your inner spirit is faith, hope, and love.
4. When you smile, you believe.
5. The calm and tranquil is your submission.
6. Trees talk like rolling waves and gentle tides.
7. Peace is your choice.
8. Grass is the comforting carpet of this place we call home.
9. Sleep is supremely restful because it is when we subconsciously have conversations with God.
10. When you bloom, you are reaching out to ALL the goodness and pulling in all of the the best resources, saying no to evil – completely unaware of the nay-sayers.

OTIS by The Durutti Column

There is a way to live this life and KNOW what it is all about, for yourself.  You do not need to explain it to anyone.  You do not need to define yourself through a display of beliefs or testify in front of the haters.

All you need to do is collect goodness for yourself.

How do you do it?

It starts with filtering out the opposite of goodness: (badness?), more like, evil.

Lies.  Deceit.  Negativity.  Gossip.  Denial.  Narcissim.  All the typical things you hear about life’s warnings.  They are real.  We take these evil concepts and actions for granted, thinking that it’s not so bad if we hurt someone once or take advantage every now and then.  It’s all the same.  It’s all evil and it adds up quickly.  When it adds up, we feel stressed, drained, weighed down.  We feel as if we are on “the wrong path.”  Well, it’s because we ARE on the wrong path.  Denial will tell you differently (lies to oneself – the worst kind of evil).

Evil acts, no matter the scale of how evil, harden the heart more and more, making us less open to believing in the good and less open to supporting others who do good for themselves.

You must collect goodness and believe in it to truly enjoy life’s fruits to the max.  THOSE ARE THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE!  Free of worrying about what others think.  Free of even thinking of combating the haters.  Free of being infected with the annoying weight of the everyday evil.  When you are this free, you are DETACHED from the world in the healthiest way possible.   Those who are careless about their actions (willing to do evil over good), will do the following to you when you are on the path of goodness:

• Judge you
• Criticize you
• Make fun of you
• Doubt you
• Interrogate you
• Manipulate you
• Try to control you

Remember – if someone wants to do good, they will learn to do it on their own.  You do not have to waste your energy teaching others how to be good or how to do good.  It’s simply an act of choice.  The world is full of examples on how to be good and take in goodness, so the resources are already there.

 

You are your own teacher.

If you want to collect goodness for yourself and just don’t know where to start or are in a rut, here are some simple steps for getting the good light going:

Step 1:  Enjoy nature and take it in – allow yourself to speak to it, listen to it, cry with it, keep it, love it, take it home with you.

Step 2:  Do not be jealous of others, or want others to affirm your goodness; affirm it for yourself and remember: “to each his own”.

Step 3:  Be honest with what you want out of life no matter how ridiculous it seems.

Step 4:  Seek dreams that preach to only good and wholesome values within.

Step 5:  Pursue dreams that rejuvenate you instead of deplete you.

Step 6.  Edit your dream if it takes advantage of your own inner peace or takes advantage of others.

Step 7:  Rid yourself of your pride – life is not a race or a competition.

Step 8:  Validate others as they rise; Be specific with your compliments for it to be from the heart, otherwise, you do not mean it at all.

Step 9:  Listen to your prayers, writing, and the silence; break down your own patterns of denial.

Step 10:  Collect physical pictures of family and friends that bring you peace, or souvenirs from places and/or nature that light you up internally with love and grace; surround yourself with them to keep you honest when you look in the mirror and to self-rejuvenate when needed.

Collecting goodness is a real thing, and the more you do it, the more you can give it to yourself and to others.  No one can scale how good, GOOD is.  It’s like soap, it’s self-cleansing, and a little goes a long way.  Ignore the haters who criticize how good you are or where you rank in this supposed competition of goodness.  Those who think goodness is a competition are already at the bottom of the barrel, having a hard time rising.  Let them stay at the bottom and enjoy knowing that you are just having a blast focused on YOU.

It’s as simple as that.

Santa Fe by Beirut

The best part of life is laughing.  If you can crack a joke, then you have the special skill of taking a truth, and twisting it in a way so that your audience can see a new angle at something very common.  Reminds me of those damn 80s toys with all the colored squares.  You keep twisting every side and every face of it until the colors align.  Well, humor is much like that.  You keep twisting and reshaping until you see something that cracks you up!  And then you share it with the people who you know will love the realization too.  Feels like magic when you laugh together.

SHARING PROPAGATES LAUGHING

Comedians are my favorite because they come from ALL walks of life, something I believe the whole United States of America thinks is a myth.  We for some reason have this idea engrained that says we must have a certain amount of money, pedigree, love, life … to make it.  Well guess what?  You can make it at anything you want to, if you actually are feeding the little monster inside you who wants more and more of whatever it is that you crave.  Don’t worry, he’s a nice little monster on the inside, maybe more like a gremlin – Gizmo style.  But in any case, you gotta feed the gremlin!  He’s constantly stirring around in there.  And he is not happy when you give it other things that you think will tie him over.  He only wants ONE THING.  He wants what HE CRAVES.  Don’t feed the little guy Doritos when you know he wants PUFFY CHEETOS!

Comedians, break every stereotype known to man.  And by known-to-man, I mean the United States.  Because let’s face it, the rest of the world is much more grounded than we will ever be simply because of our polar opposite definitions of fear.  For example, I was at the Wizards game the other night and I haven’t been to an NBA game since Kobe was hot shit on the Lakers in 2004.  Anyway, I was all pumped and psyched to go to the Wizards game in the hopes of having a team on the East Coast whom I can pay allegiance to finally – my way of really connecting with where I am.  I ended up having a total BLAST at the game!  Not because of how much I love basketball (of which I do), but I caught myself drooling over the basketball players and laughing at how much crap the guys behind me were talking about the players.  In that moment, I realized just how AMERICAN I truly am.  How we all are for that matter.

Blankets on Blankets, and Blessed beyond Blessed.

While that 5% of Diane was completely engrossed in the game, the other 95% started to think about how crazy it was that this is what we are able and allowed to do for fun all the time as American citizens.  This is not new news, only a comical notion at how drastic our lives are in comparison to the rest of the world.  Because while I was pumped to pin where the Geico Gecko was on the jumbo tron, part of me felt a little ridiculous doing that.  I started thinking about how people my own age in other countries will never even have that kind of fun or carefree life to even waste time on let alone pay for it.  They are in survival mode living in actual fear, while I’m afraid of not being able to pee in time to make it back for the last quarter of the game.

YES – I thought about all of this while eyeing #12 on the Wizards.

Don’t get me wrong.  I had a faaaaaaaaaaantastic time at the game, and I did not stop my night and be like, “Hold on guys!  Nobody have a good time, because people are dying and suffering everywhere else!”  But it did provoke me to see some angles I had not yet articulated yet about being true to yourself.  Making note of these ironies opened the window to why I appreciate being able to laugh and study comedians that much more.

Thus: LAUGHING is a 1st World Luxury.  And it must be harnessed by everyone.

It KILLS ME when I visit new places in our own country where people are JUST NOT LAUGHING ENOUGH.  We are so lucky to even have the freedom to laugh!  There’s no laughing in other countries the way we crack up!  No no no no no.  Their laughing is like that pure family-joy type laughing.  It probably only happens every now and then.  Nobody is making a living off of that?!  SO basically, we, the Americans who keep getting everything we want, are the last people on the planet who should be slitting our wrists or treating people terribly.  Get on board, and LAUGH MORE.  Simply because, we can.  

Laughing is pure FREEDOM escaping from your lungs when you least expect it.

I love comedians for many reasons, but one of my top fave reasons is because they are LITERALLY trying to be themselves at all times, PAY OR ZERO PAY, in front of tons of people.  And you thought speaking up in your meeting was hard?  This makes me utterly happy to know that at least five people in our nation are trying to genuinely be themselves – AND TAKING HARD HITS.  For nothing.  For no money.  For booing most of the time.  They don’t even know if they will ever make it.  They just want to write jokes and feel people enjoy what they’ve written.

Given that I have never craved to do a job for the sake of being rich, I definitely have the comedian mindset of, “It will all work out.”  I mean I have to!  My Grandpa Joe swam across the Rio Grande, my Grandpa Porfirio made train rides home to Mexico with American money in his pocket. My Mom and Dad miraculously made just enough money being teachers to provide my brothers and I with everything they didn’t have plus the attention, love, meals, conversation, and the warm energy to create HUMOR in our home.  I am eternally grateful for the people who’ve gone before me which is why I naturally became a teacher, writer, and community endorser.  I crave to feed the gremlin inside because I love the gremlin in me.  I love the way my family trusted that God would provide all we needed along the way, and today I channel my faith to keep believing in what I am doing and how to get it done.

Like the immigrant story, comedians don’t care about being homeless or just barely making it.  They don’t even live in fear, because their real fear is the stage itself.  They have to be so present to bring out the vulnerable gift they posses, that once they receive something huge like an HBO special or the chance to write the book they’ve always wanted to write, they are allowed to just enjoy it all.  I guess making it finally, would feel like retirement now that I see how happy and reflective my parents are in their retirement years.  They get to all look back and go, “Yes.  This is why I had no health insurance for 4 years,” said all the best Comedians of our day.  Truth.

I love listening to Judd Apatow talk about when he and Sandler lived in Hollywood and had no money.  Nobody was really able to pay rent, so instead of freaking out, they all waited tables and just wrote joke after joke after joke about their experiences living in LA in their tiny apartment, cracking up together and editing into the AM.  They were in it for the pursuit.  The pursuit of actually being yourself.  Which is rare these days in the US.  Except, for the ones who know it’s rare in the first place.  The rest of you, you’re stuck in the mental fog somewhere waiting to see the light.

Comedians, or people of the likes, pursue what makes their heart tickle, which in Apatow and Sandler’s case meant, betting and laughing at how many times they got offered crack just trying to go from their apartment in Hollywood down to the liquor store and back.  We’ll call that a Wednesday.

When you find what you love to do, it’s like a drug that you can’t stop taking.  Much like thecomedian and the gut-trusting nights of sickly doing what you love before an audience who could care less about you, many of us who are in this life for the pursuit get pulled away from the ones we love to get the foundation going consistently.  Like getting the joke off the ground, we must pursue blindly until the faith and trust comes naturally.  But once it all gets going, and you allow yourself to truly listen to the cravings, to the muse that makes you tick, it guides your life and fuels the little gremlin in your heart, paving the way for new opportunities, new places, and more great people.  It eventually provides the consistent balance you are seeking in order to care and provide for your family, friends, and parents.  Full circle moment for sure, and it feels like magic when you realize you are relieved you took the plunge to feed the gremlin in the first place.

I aspire to think and be like my most favorite comedians to the core.  Not because I like to be funny or on stage (and yes I love both to a certain extent), but I crave it in a daily life kind of way.  I do not need the professional title or the professional laugh, but I do need to know that I can make sense of the world we live in so that I can stay true to it in my own way.  The cherry on top is that I get to laugh about all the notions made.

I realized this when I was teaching way back when.  Making kids learn and understand concepts through humor came naturally to me.  Extend that humor to the faculty lounge and man, I wish there were some secret cameras in there to catch the reenactments of our daily stories of all our classrooms!  That should be a show.  The chronicles of the Faculty Lounge.  Even when I was a kid, I used to impersonate celebrities in front of my parents or mock my parents and siblings right in front of them – they loved it!  We all loved it!  It was healing and clarifying in its own way.  Humor just speaks volumes, if you are on the same page of course.

Through this odd way of sharing truths, our family was able to work through a lot of tough chapters together.  I finally understood my family’s way of communicating as a “funny” family when I got older.  When I went through some real life-facing of my own.  I’ll never forget when I showed up at my parents house after leaving the most toxic chapter of my life, and my Dad and Mom walked in per usual from one of their movie dinner-date nights all happy and laughing, expecting nothing bad to be waiting on their doorstep.  They walked in and saw me lying on the comfy green carpet of our family room staring up at the ceiling.  I was motionless.  Dead inside.  They could tell just from that one moment, that no questions needed to be asked.  I just felt them looking at me.

My mom immediately said after about 40 long seconds, “Oh thank God you’re home!!!!!” and in her most loving way, rushed to the kitchen while yelling, “Oh Diane!  I’ve got dessert!  What do you want to eat?  I’ll make you whatever you want!” (Practical loving Martha, food and dessert speaks volumes in our family and that’s funny in itself.)  Meanwhile, I turned my neck toward my Dad and from the floor looking up, I said, “I’m leaving ‘so-and-so’.  It’s over.  There’s nothing else I can do.”  He took one look at me and with the most loving, chill voice said, “Good.  Don’t worry about a thing.  You’re young and pretty.”  I remember, I laughed somewhere deeeeeeeeeep down when he said this, and I knew I was still alive somewhere in there.  Somewhere deep down, the little gremlin had heard the effort to want to giggle, and promised to be fully unleashed once it had the energy to be around people again.  He walked off to the kitchen to help my mom prepare the food, and just like that, my life went on.

MY PARENTS ARE ABSURD AND HILARIOUS AND I LOVE THEM FOR EXACTLY WHO THEY ARE.

THEY ARE A LIFE-FORCE FULL OF HILARITY, TRUTH & TRUST.

You see, comedians DON’T GIVE A CRAP ABOUT WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS.  My parents are very much this way.  They didn’t even need to know much about the situation, but of course we talked about it all thoroughly and they helped me get back on my feet by being the absurdly, practical human beings they are.  They speak and spoke with such confidence that it was so easy to trust their words.  About 4 months later, I knew one day I would write to help other people with their extreme-life-moments as well; to do what my parents did for me, but for the world.

This is why comedians or anyone for that matter, are so successful.  When you have this kind of faith in what you are doing, nothing can stop you.  If anything, you’ll take a moment to laugh and look back at it all or enjoy it all in the moment.  Comedians are able to get spontaneous gigs, and hour long HBO specials because of their attitude toward life.  Because they crave and love to be themselves on that stage before all to see, for the sake of self-healing or crowd-healing.  It doesn’t matter.  In the end, it’s such a sacrificial form of healing.

It’s simply ATTRACTIVE BEING YOURSELF.

It’s also total SELF-SACRIFICE.

My parents, brothers and cousins are to thank for the fact that I enjoy making these connections humorously and vulnerably before others.  If it weren’t for all their smack talk and competitive, story-talking, I would never have been able to jump over life’s hurdles the way the circus tiger leaps through the circle of FIRE!

To some extent, WE ALL want to live and be like this.  We all want to be able to just jump through the fire without questioning and know the SECRET to life.  Well guess what?  It’s not a secret, and it only takes the power of YOU to obtain how to live so freely.  You just have to get on board with laughing, or at least be open to seeing the lightness of life even when it is so dark outside.  The way a kid can easily crack up at a joke that makes no sense –  that is exactly how it is!  Just laughing in your own head, in your own world, all the time.  All the live long day.  And when you sink back into the slump that you may have been feeling or the terrible chapter of life that we all must go through, you have to reach into yourself and pull yourself out of the hole you’ve been digging to make yourself laugh.

You have no choice.  This is life.  So find something to crack up about.

Something will throw you off the laughing train 9 times out of 10 per day when you first start trying to see the humor of life.  You’ll be all happy and on a roll like on a Monday, and then Thursday hits and you realize you haven’t paid your medical bills and your car just broke down too!  BUT LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!!!!  You have no choice.  There is literally nothing else you can do, but admit the shit you are in and then laugh at how crappy it is!  This actually happened to me one month ago, but it all worked out.  I would like to thank laughter for being that first launchpad out of HELL.  Instead of freaking out about it, I laughed because yes, it’s total BS that that all those bills can hit you at once.  And they do, almost on purpose.

In a way, things like bills are funny to me now only because after surviving the terrible chapter of 2009, nothing else can ever get me down.  I’m sure many can relate to this kind of talk.  After a mother gives birth, she is completely unafraid of all the petty things she used to worry about.  After you start a business and get it going, you feel invincible.  The thing is, you cannot just surpass hurdles.  YOU MUST INTERNALIZE THEM, for you to be able to endure MORE LIFE LESSONS without freaking out.  That’s the goal!  Because you know it’s not life without a bunch of shitty things happening every three years or so.  More is always coming.  Good and bad is all together in this life.  If you do not equip yourself with the skills from the first lesson, then you end up just being the same idiot who went through it blindly the first time.  One of my most favorite documentaries sums up this notion quite candidly:

“Taking a trip for six months to get in the rhythm of it. It feels like you can go on forever doing that. Climbing Everest is the ultimate and the opposite of that. Because you get these high powered plastic surgeons and CEO’s, they pay $80,000 and have sherpas put the ladders in place and 8000 feet of fixed ropes and you get to the camp and you don’t even have to lay out your sleeping bag. It’s already laid out with a chocolate mint on the top. The whole purpose of planning something like Everest is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain and if you compromise the process, you’re an asshole when you start out and you’re an asshole when you get back.” – Yvone Chouinard from  180 Degrees South Documentary

My Aunt Margie lost her son, her Dad, and her husband in the span of 1.5 years.  I thought of her when I was going through my terrible chapter.  More bluntly, she was right there with me through the whole experience.  This voice in my head.  This warmth by my side.  My laugh factory when I needed to see straight again, but couldn’t hear it from anyone else.

I wanted to jump off a cliff, crash my car, eat a whole bottle of pills, but this is what woke me up one day.  I was pissed and wondering why I was dealt a shitty situation.  Crying my eyes out of anger and ready to throw stuff everywhere, I looked at her in rage and said, “Aren’t you mad!!!???  Why aren’t you mad?!?!?!?!  You lost everyone you love!  AND you even lived through what I am going through now!  What the hell!?”  I wanted answers. And she looked me dead in the eyes.  I honestly thought she was going to slap me for not keeping it together.  Instead she brought the volume down and said with great composure, “Mija.  I am here because of you.  Because of Lisa (her daughter).  Because of Andrew (her other son).  Because of the boys (her grandkids).  And because of your parents and the boys (my brothers).”  She goes, “Look at you!  You’re a friggin wreck!  We’re pretty sure you haven’t showered in a month and your hair looks like total SHIT!”

HA!!!!!!!  I am still laughing to this day.  She is the reason for all reasons.  She is the best Aunt I could have ever designed even if I was God.  Man, she kept it real.  And she mad me laugh my butt off.  It was the first time I had laughed in 4 months after my chapter of total disconnection.  We kept the laughter going.  I said hysterically, “Why haven’t you slit your wrists yet?!?!?!”  She laughed back in my face, “Haha!!!!  Mija!!!  I wish I could slit my wrists, but I can’t!  I can’t even kill myself because of all you idiots!”  We couldn’t stop laughing.  I think when you go through Hell, you come out looking for Heaven, so you just can’t stop laughing after life finally shows you what life is all about.

She was right.  She will forever be right.  And to this day, Aunt Margie is going on trips with my Mom and Dad, her most favorite other people in the world to crack up with.  She takes care of my cousins, her two-remaining kids and THEIR kids.  She fills us ALL up with so much joy and love and hugs AND STILL HAS THE HEART TO MAKE US almost pee from giggling too much.  She is literally one of my top favorite people in this world, the best hugger if you ever met a hugger, and is the warmest place I go to (other than my parents) when I need to remember who the hell I am.

If we didn’t have people like this to show us how it’s done, then yes, we’d all be sucking on some drugs to just dip out and be done with it all.  Like my nephew keeps saying when we wrestle, “I’m gonna kick you in the nuts Aunt Diane!”  It just makes me laugh so hard, because I don’t have the “balls” to tell him that I do not have these so-called nuts.  But I will say it to you whether you have nuts or not, you cannot let life kick you in the nuts!  And in some odd way, it’s nice thinking that we all have the same parts.

WE’VE ALL GOT NUTS.

Put it all in perspective for yourself before you have a FREAK OUT over some very, small, easy-to-figure-out stuff.  It’s not about you trying to be a comedian and making people laugh all the time.  Or trying to make yourself happy so that everything in your life goes smoothly and feels peachy.  It’s just a way to re-train your mind so that you can wake up and see the idiosyncrasies of life and be aware of the jokes swimming in your brain that you just haven’t had the BALLS to say out loud yet.

You might make yourself laugh one of these days.  Like really laugh.  And I hope you do. I hope when that moment comes, that you pee a little bit in your pants from laughing so hard.  OR, that you laugh so embarrassingly in front of the person you are crushing over with a bush of kale sticking out of your teeth so that the other person starts point-laughing at you (one of my all time fave styles of laughter), all the while you think you are laughing together but really he/she is laughing AT YOU, not WITH YOU.

IT’S TIME TO GET POINT-LAUGHED AT!

The nation in general, just needs to take a giant dump or something.  Maybe that’s why so many people are gluten free, vegan, and taking probiotics?!  Trust me, if you work on your INNER SELF, you won’t need all these wonderfully, beautiful allergies.  It’s all about doing what you love and trusting that the sea will part for you if you are true to yourself.  When I moved to from the West Coast to the East Coast, my brother would always tell me that the East Coast just needs a giant enema!!! (Hilarious.) That was his way of helping me be myself in a place so not myself and a reminder of just how different we truly are from the environment surrounding us.  That I wasn’t imagining it, and that he too is a survivor.  Still himself.  Still making jokes.  Not phased one bit.  Only more of himself.

The enema statement is so true though. It’s one of those jokes that really hits the spot no matter what way you turn the 80s Rubik’s Cube! And his joke actually helped me cope.  It stayed in my subconscious every time someone at Rite Aid didn’t respond when I said, “Have a nice day!” or when people would comment, “Oh ya, she’s just like that.  She’s happy all the time.”  If they only knew that it takes great strength, skill, practice, and research to block out the crap in this country.

The enema joke lives on because now that I have lived in such a different land for so long I know there are simply some places where a community doesn’t just need one enema, but they need a routine visit to the doctor’s quarterly!  Fall and Christmas kind of make up for it on the East Coast, but then January hits and people are all pissed off again for no reason.  I could care less now.  But I guess it’s always just an anomaly to me because there’s really not a whole lot that makes life suck on the East Coast.  There is so much to love and appreciate about the seasons, the history, the museums.   Anyway, now I have this shield of “I don’t even notice when you’re angry” the way the comedian on stage is simply running on adrenaline to share her gift with the world.

I WAS BORN THIS WAY, to learn, listen, survive, and pursue.  It’s not about how much love I had when I was little, or how many marathons I’ve run, or how much money I have, or where I went to school, or the fact that I’m Mexican-American-Chicana-Latina-Hispanic-Brown.  We all have special gifts.  I simply cannot sleep at night if I do not share mine.  And what I’ve figured out along the way is that not everyone is sharing their gift as honestly as they could be.

Just like when you’re a kid and you realize you can move your left eyebrow up super well, but can’t even move your right eyebrow muscle.  So you choose to sit in front of the mirror for an hour trying to get your right eyebrow to arc up.  That experience alone will connect with about half the population out there.  You see, there’s two types of people in the world. Those who are willing to learn how to move the other eyebrow, and those who just don’t give a crap.  I love to figure these things out and then teach it to someone else.   But the teaching point is still there:  ANYONE CAN GET IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR.  That in itself, is a learned habit.  Even though I naturally want to sit in front of the mirror and conquer this thing I cannot do, I can teach someone else how to pursue the mirror challenge.  I can show them “how I got there,” “what to look out for,” “how to train to discipline yourself in such a way.”  It is then up to you to use the knowledge.  To actually sit in front of the mirror  and exercise your gift.  Your soul.  Your laugh.  Your humor.  Maybe just start with, your smile.

I’ve been realizing I am so used to pouring latte art and pour overs, that I decided to switch hit one day.  “Today, I’m going to pour left handed,” I told myself when I stepped on bar.  I got super excited, but no one ever even knew.  I absolutely loved it!!!!   It was a joke to myself all day long, and was a new challenge I wanted to conquer.  More specifically it was a new perspective.  Now I know what all the lefties be talking about?!  I get all their jokes and all their left-handed idiosyncrasies.  I chose to enjoy this comical moment with myself and it ended up serving a deeper realization.  You either want to learn something or not.  You either want to be you or not.  You either want to settle or not.  You either want to laugh or not.

Get over it.  And just do it.

Why are you holding back the belly laugh?

So Jesus was right then?  You DO NEED TO live life and have faith like the heart of a child. (Jesus Joke!  Oh no, she’s Catholic.  Let’s get all crazy about it.  Jesus.  Get over it.  At this point there’s so many labels out there we’re all practically a blank slate again.)  But yes, He is absolutely right.  If you live life the way a child does, (which is probably the actual secret of life), then you are immune to the “ridiculose” (said with Harry Potter inflection) of life.  If you live life with the faith of a child, then you never think of all the terrible things that could stand in your way of following your heart down the path of what you love to do.  And more importantly, you never doubt; just trust.  More related to this post, if you go at it hard like a kid, then you will SEE what the world is truly like all around you and LAUGH AT IT from the inside out instead of let it kill you.

You need to be able to look at life like a kid, and sit in front of that mirror until you TRULY SEE YOURSELF.  Once you see and admit who you actually are, you will be able to make genuine affirmations about yourself and the world around you.  Then, right behind that chapter, is the comedy phase, that is so rich it never fades away.

If you want the stuck up adult explanation then here it is: get over yourself, to be yourself.  Let’s go through the list of today’s comedians so you can see what I am talking about and realize that you don’t need a special formula to love life and that it’s not rocket science to keep your cool, be successful, and do what you love all at the same time:

• Jimmy Fallon (loving Irish, Catholic family; raised in a humorous, family-entertaining atmosphere; middle class, definitely had steak and potatoes on the table at all times)
• Jerry Seinfeld (stern, loving family; somewhat stoic, dry humor atmosphere, middle class, no awareness or much guidance here; Jerry was kind of on his own, father was a small business owner, but father was the initiative of humor)
• Cristela Alonzo (Mexican, grew up in the hood in Texas; lower class, south of the border style; against all odds craved to do comedy mostly because of all the gangs in her neighborhood;lived in LA in her car at the age of 21, mother died early in her career, succeeded beyond all measures)
• Chris Rock (Black, grew up in  South Carolina and Brooklyn, subjected to racism at a young age, hardworking middle class family, humor derived from young experiences with racism at a predominantly all white school)
• Dane Cook (most average white dude in America; mother died mid-high-point of his career, I saw him live in college and died of laughing because he grew up kidding around with his siblings; middle-class and acts like a 10 year old on the reg)
• Judd Apatow (comedic genius; middle class family, Jewish family and culture very present in his life; his opinions on Judaism formed most of his comedic writing; was a writer prior to ever performing comedy; the most profound comedic writer of our time)

I could go on, but these are just some of my favorites.  Judd Apatow writes more on the specifics of where humor comes from based on all the comedians over the past 30 years in his book, one of my all time favorite reads, Sick in the Head.  Whether you think family, drugs, life experiences, money, race – whatever – affects the success of a comedian, THEY DO NOT.  A person simply craves this bone in their body in order to live. Like a missing vitamin all the time, they crave to twist the truths of life so that you can see them through their perspective, thus clarifying all things in life.  No one is 100 percent right or wrong, much like a parallel for life, but if you are willing to listen to the depth of the jokes, yes you will learn a thing or two.  It’s all about making these hilarious accusations at the people that need to hear them and for yourself to hear out loud.  The most daring affirmations, ’tis comedy.  And whether you agree or disagree, get over it. It’s for the point of manipulating the truth brilliantly so that all perspectives may be seen.

Comedy takes talking and observing.

I have a longing to do the same, in my own way – to twist things until they are seen.  You can do them in your daily job, in the way you act, in how you talk, in how you receive conversations.  Be on standby if you’re not a talker, because when you observe you pick up on all the moments in between the words which are actually funnier.  Note, you cannot strike up more data for the love of comedy if you do not give the audience more chances.  Therefore, my favorite parts about being a talker are watching the people you are having a conversation with and how they react.  Give them something to respond to, and there lies the joke.  These are the most valuable frame-by-frame moments in life, or so, I believe.

People assume that I am a talker, which is very true to a certain extent.  Where people miss the mark is they assume Talkers were born as talkers.  Not the case in my situation.  I grew up more isolated.  To myself.  Not many to actually talk to.  I had to teach myself how to become a TALKER and how to be heard.  After my terrible chapter, I decided to own up to this kind of “fun energy” I was born with and love “the room” as I like to call it.  I decided that I felt okay being the life of the party, and that when in doubt, I could transform a room if I wanted to.  It’s just fun to do sometimes if I feel like it, but also it’s a playground for me to learn A TON about how people tick and interact with community on a bigger scale.

As the talker,  you have the ability to watch people as you are talking.  You can read into a lot of things as you connect through words.  But when you stop talking, you can feel the room too.  Usually people’s insecurities rise to the surface fast or frustrations they have about things not said and said.  Behind all of that is usually one or two secure people.  Their energy will always be so bright and feel so good.  You can then start analyzing where the topics go and how they develop based on who is in the room.  Let’s call this conversation.  Wink.  As I filter these types of things out when I am “talking” to people, it becomes comical to me.  It makes me laugh at how many different kinds of people there are in the world and what we are all worried about on a daily basis.  It’s just part of the gig when you can be the “talker.”  It feels like you have special powers when you work a room, but really it’s all based on reading your audience the way a comedian can feel the room without ever even knowing anyone in it.  Remember, everyone you meet, is simply a stranger.

Therefore, I am an OBSERVER as well.  And this is my favorite role to play.  I personally do not enjoy talking if I am really not in the mood to talk. The secret is that I observe 7 times more than I talk.  WHICH IS A LOT.  Like little clues, I add up all this tiny info from interacting with people and can make sense of the world very quickly based on these observations for the sake of applying to the following passions of mine:  teaching, relating, writing, learning, empathetic strength, comedy sketches + comedic writing, self-awareness, helping heal people, healing myself, and spiritual healing for all.  Observing comes very naturally to me, yet I had to teach myself how to talk in a connected way and withstand the various types of personalities in the room.

You can be ALL THINGS, if you just teach yourself to be.

The jokes are all around, ready to be made.  No one needs to even laugh at what you think is funny, because trust me, YOU will have the last laugh when you realize how fun life can be instead of how mundane or angry you’ve been before this.  When that “last laugh moment” goes off on your insides, I hope you just keep on laughing, forgetting you’re around people, forgetting you’re without people.  It will be the best moment of your life, and then some.  It will be the launchpad to an awesomely, care-free yet purposeful life;  the ying-and-yang if you will.

JUST MAKE ME LAUGH

When I was little, I used to love coming home from school and telling my brother all about my day.  I was on this adrenaline rush of observing and analyzing throughout the day, that I couldn’t wait to tell someone about all the collective data I had picked up on in and out of recess and volleyball and basketball and the beach and just plain cultural stupidity!

He would literally say to me when I walked in the door, “Just make me laugh.”  And boom, I was on!  I would reenact everything I had been growing in my mind from throughout the day for like 15 minutes straight and impersonate every single person I knew.  I LOVED IT.  It was an actual release of some sort not because he would put me on the figurative stage, but because we would laugh at the same trigger points.  It made me so happy that someone else in the world knew what I was talking about!  That he GOT my jokes!  And that is rare to find in this day and age.  Humor is deep, whether you like it or not.  It’s intimate.  It builds stronger friendships, co-working relationships, marriages, lovers, siblings, sibling-in-laws, and bonds between children and their parents.

It’s like all of a sudden, you speak the same language; a secret language.

Today, I cannot really relate to my own generation, or, most of the time I am disappointed in the decisions made and actions taken (or not taken).  Maybe half of us just got zapped too hard with the epidural so it takes until we are 45 to grow the balls to be aware and genuinely connect.  It’s like my generation is terrified to be themselves!  And that’s a shame, because while people are lost and not-trying to look in the mirror, more and more selfish decisions are made that hurt the people they so-call love.  People would rather cheat then break up.  Abuse, than face their own demons.  Isolate, than reconnect.  Talk shit, than move on.  If you inserted even the slightest bit of humor in there somewhere, I bet people would get to the truth a lot faster.  Maybe even take action than passively hurting everyone around them.  Let’s face it, being passive pretty much leads to some of the most horrific events in history.  So strike up the comedy and get down to the nuggets now, before it’s too late.

Not only is humor therapeautic for you, it’s therapeutic for others.  So I dare you to seek therapy in laughter!  Find your funny bone.  Quick disclaimer!  To find your funny bone, you gotta start gettin’ down with who you are.  Trust me.  It’s a trip you don’t want to miss out on.  It’s a wild ride that Mr. Toad is not on.  It’s a trip down memory lane, except without all the memories, just twisted moments your mind pulls together and makes sense of.  It’s pure enlightenment and makes you feel so calm afterward, like lighting a candle in mass and walking away relieved going, “En Fuego Baby!  All that Catholic guilt was just there to lure me in and set me freeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Just, make me laugh.

You know you want to.

The Rescue Song (RAC Remix) by Mr Little Jeans

Growing up, I played mad sports.  It helps, when you have two older brothers.  No wonder to this day I enjoy the training mindset and mentality behind everything I pursue.

But Mike and Dave, my two older brothers, were truly the best two coaches I could have had.  They did not just show me the fundamentals.  They showed me the meaning behind them and how those fundamentals relate to the bigger picture.  

There were moments of frustration of course and they did not communicate this all for me, I had to read between the lines and put my own frustrations aside to truly learn from them.  For example, it was hard for me to “mimic” their movements when I was really young because my body simply didn’t move the same way.  And at times, it was hard to endure practicing, when I had already failed at the drill we were doing about 3 to 5 times.

It was the time spent with my brothers that I truly enjoyed though.  I just liked being with them and I looked up to them with such a huge heart.  And now, whenever I work hard for something, it nostalgically brings me back to those days.

They were never mean, but they pushed me to the limit and demanded me to work harder and be better the way a good teacher does.  And though my mom would yell outside every now and then, “Come inside it’s getting dark!”  I still wanted to throw more practice pitches and see if I could strike my brother out.

Competition is healthy.

It helps you see where you want to improve or if you are truly passionate about something.  You discover why it is you do what you do and just how genuine you are about being yourself, despite what others think or want you to be.  You learn how to block all that out and just do what you love.

As a coffee professional, I see my life coming full circle and channeling all the parts of everything I’ve ever experienced in life from teaching, to sports, to writing, to presenting, to training for marathons.  What I hear and feel on most days is that all of this goes back to how my brothers (and parents, as they are athletes and very passionate people as well) instilled in me a sense of determination.

When you are determined, you are committed and passionate about your personal goals and the person you are becoming.  And chances are, we are all only determined about a few key principles in life.  For me I am determined about the following:

• To trust God completely and know He is helping me create, love, be patient, and care about community no matter what
• To improve as a daughter, sister, aunt, niece and cousin DAILY
• To be incredibly independent so that I can take care of my parents one day the way they have taken care of me
• To USE the gifts I was born with to foster community, ignite it with goodness, and pave the way for ALL YOUTH as they grow up in this world
• To travel and write so that I may share with others the beauty of this world and how to take care of it

I decided to write these goals down about 10 years ago.  I realized that if we as adults write these internal things down, then we will actually do them and live by them.  And that if you don’t, then you are more likely to make excuses for your actions.

Once I wrote these personal goals down for myself, I refined them more and more each year to hold myself accountable and keep myself on track.  It is hard to live by these simple strategies and values as adults because we want to pretend they don’t exist when we are in position to obtain instant gratification based on greediness, success, pride, love, and vanity.  But when you think like a kid, and YOU KNOW, that your actions reflect who you are, then these types of principles and values become important again.

Mike and Dave gave me a glimpse of how to stay focused on my personal goals at a young age through training for basketball and baseball, but it was my choice to go back in time and admit that I had subconsciously internalized those lessons learned and now choose to live by them.  Sometimes you need to admit these types of things to yourself, not for the sake of arrogance or glowing.  No.  It’s so that you know you have the skill to change.  To be good.  To forgive.  To learn.  To improve, as an individual.

I believe everyone in life is given the opportunity to learn such lessons.  To learn what commitment, practice, determination and dedication look like and how to use them for your own benefit.

People often make the following excuses the way students claim they didn’t learn something that the teacher already taught them:

1. But no one in my family taught me these lessons.
2. But I didn’t go to a good school.
3. But I didn’t grow up in a sheltered neighborhood.
4. But I didn’t have the things you had.
5. But no one ever told me that was wrong.

Most lessons learned in life don’t even come from the loving people in your family, and to be frank, it’s not like my brothers and I were best friends when were little while they were “teaching” me these lessons.  I call them lessons because I analyzed as an adult what I took from each person I met in life, whether I liked them or not.  Whether these relationships caused pain or were joyful.  Learning is learning, and you are the only one who can use the knowledge for yourself.

My brothers were just being themselves.  They were not going to play barbies with me and customize some sort of childhood to what I WANTED.  I didn’t know any different since I had no sisters, so I definitely had less love for dolls and girlie toys anyway.  The court or building things was where we bonded, because that’s all they  knew.  It was the natural result of being home alone while our parents worked hard to put a roof over our heads.

To add to the fact that lessons do not come in the form we think they come in, most of the time, we learn the most valuable lessons through people we don’t even like, or people we butt heads with right away.  When I trace back the lessons I’ve learned or the ones I’ve internalized, they always came from those friction-type relationships, meaning from the people I did not prefer to get along with right away.

I have my own way of dealing with people I don’t like.  And yes, my way of dealing with them involves a lot of prayer and running and thinking about others more than myself, but people don’t normally take to that kind of stuff.  So all I can say, is that if you don’t use the God route to endure difficult relationships, then you have to TRAIN YOURSELF to put others first.  You literally have to forget about the annoying things another person does, and only look at the facts.  What are they good at?  And what can I learn from them?  And then block everything else out.  When you focus on those positive elements in a person, they will reveal to you why you met them in the first place.  But you gotta get over yourself, to see this kind of light.

When you butt heads with someone, it is because on some level, you are a lot alike.  In these situations, take it as a sign that the temptations to not listen, are actually a reflection of your pride.  And pride is a major DREAM KILLER.  So knock that pride out of the park, and listen to the writing between the lines when you are interacting with someone who bothers you.  They most likely are teaching you something that you are craving to learn.

Later in life, I deterred from the sports my brothers trained me in and chose my own athletic path.  I had grown up watching Misty May play volleyball when she was in college at Long Beach and admired the person she was.  I would watch how she carried herself and how she competed with no emotion – just passion for the game.  I wanted to be like that.  I wanted to learn how to grow as a person without being “affected” by things that didn’t go my way.

My older cousin Maria, with the most Mexican name out of all of us, just happened to be blonde-haired and blue-eyed and on top of that, 5″9.  She got a scholarship to University of San Diego as an outside hitter, and that also motivated me to believe that I too could rock it at volleyball.  I figured, it must be genetic.  Haha, and by default, I also chose volleyball because my mom was a college tennis player.  Let’s just say she’s really good.  Volleyball is the same season as tennis, so I chose my own sport as a way of creating my own identity.  Something I am obviously very passionate about.

And so I took a leap of faith down the route of a sport no one in my immediate family was really familiar with yet.  Given I’m 5″7 and enjoy strategy more than striking, I chose the path of a setter at a young age.  A setter is the person who gently guides the ball in the air for the hitter to actually “strike” or “place” on the other side of the court.

Setting takes  a ton of meticulous training, composure, multi-tasking/thinking, and finesse.  I remember I had one month out of the year by my sophomore year of high school, where I had a break from sports.  No conditioning.  No practice.  No games.  Nothing.  I was SO EXCITED to have this break since my schedule was 5am basketball practice, then school, then volleyball practice for my school team then club volleyball practice from 8 – 10pm.  And somehow I had really good grades because my mom made me do all my homework and would wake me up in the middle of the night to finish an assignment if she found out I didn’t do it.

I was exhausted and starting to wish I’d just get injured or could quit one of the sports I was less into.  I was jumping on the couch and ready to hit the beach every single day or sit around and just relax.  The phone rang, and my setter coach said, “Hey, you’ve got this opportunity to go to a two week camp in Long Beach.  Misty May is coaching it and they are going to pick the top 5 setters out of the group to win season tickets to Cal State Long Beach.”

I was actually pissed.  I wanted to so badly just opt out, even though my all time athletic idol was running the show.

I went from extreme relief to the most extreme anger burst I’ve ever had.  I screamed and threw my face into the couch.  My face was burning because I knew I really wanted to go even though I was insanely tired.  I remember laying there knowing I’d feel better in a second if I just slowed it down and looked at the benefits of this opportunity.  I put aside how fatigued I was and went right back into athlete mode.  My mind could do that because I learned in that moment how to prioritize what’s important to me.  Even at that age, I was more passionate about discovering my highest potential in everything I did, no matter how much the superficial parts of me just wanted to give up.

It was a Saturday when I got the call and that Monday I went to the camp.  It was THE BEST camp I ever trained at and I learned some of the most valuable lessons for life during those two weeks that I still use today.  Ya, that year I definitely burned out and ending up dropping basketball so that I could focus on volleyball, but the camp was completely worth it.  And being pushed to that limit was actually kind of healthy because it forced me to specify where my heart was at with each sport I played.

I walked out of the camp as the number one setter.  I won the tickets to Cal State Long Beach’s games for the Fall, earned the lead setting position on both my club and high school teams and got to meet and train with Misty May and her team of colleagues.

I will never forget it.

 

 

Volleyball soon became this training ground for how I looked at life.  And it didn’t all piece together for me until recently.

I used to think of every single movement in volleyball as that half court shot at the end of a basketball game against your biggest rival.  You see, every movement in volleyball (unlike most sports) has to be DELIBERATE and under very crucial circumstances.  Half the time, nothing is coming to you perfectly.  The ball just got shanked.  Your hitter forgot to come to you for the set.  All these things go wrong, and it’s up to you to make a decision to keep the play going, as the setter.  You have no time to hesitate.   Once you hesitate, the other team wins.  It’s that simple.

As the setter, you run plays for 6 people on the court.  I learned to plan out three possible plays for every ball that came to me.  Depending on how the ball came to me, I then had to adjust WITHIN THAT ONE SECOND, to set to whatever plays remained possible.  The more accurate I was as a setter, the more opportunities we had to score.  Therefore, I just got really good at setting and then learned how to over-communicate with each of my teammates and keep their spirits up so that they would get me a good pass to then set to my hitters.  You’re like the quarter back, the freaking cheerleader, the actual leader, and the nugget of consistency for the team when everything feels like it’s about to crumble.  If your setter is negative, the whole team suffers.

When you set, you have to be aware of all the blockers on the other side of the net too, so that you can set the team up for the best possible attempt at out-witting a blocker.  Imagine three blockers going up on the other side of the net, and having to find the “hole” or the one spot where we can get a hit either around a blocker or on a blocker that is too slow to get up in time or even just not there yet.  As the setter you can also fake out the other team and discretely change your sets at the last second which opens up even more holes for your hitter to nail.  That’s always a crowd pleaser when it works out.

I loved it – the strategy behind every set in volleyball.  The excitement of how you knew the play would totally work, the same way you JUST KNOW a half court shot is totally going in right at the buzzer.

Life is much the same way.

Having to make quick, but accurate decisions in the nick of time for something more than yourself.  

For the team.

Being the decision maker for all of these ways for us to succeed built a bond between me, the passers, and the hitters.  As I would set the ball up, I would watch this beautiful creation flying away from my hands and watch the hitter eagerly obey the play and respond to your set, only to annihilate it with all her might.

I had to have faith in my passers, to give me a proper pass (which is hard when they are reacting to difficult hits coming straight at them), and then have faith in myself to get in position behind whatever pass came to me in order to set up the hit for the last part of the play, the hitter.  Our three positions became very close because of how much we had to work together, communicate, practice, and believe in one another.

Just like when you shoot a half court shot and you watch it all the way to the rim, believing in it as it arcs its way closer and closer, I would look up at each set and just admire the ball, knowing we had trained hard enough to get to this point.  And no matter what, no matter the practice put into it, the strategy behind every play, it still FELT like a half court shot.  It still felt like something spontaneously going up in the air that we were all just hoping would work out.  The rush.  The adrenaline.  The hope.  That’s how every decision in life should feel.

Exciting.

As if …

What’s next?

Where are we traveling to now?

Where will I be in 10 years?

Who will I meet tomorrow?

As much as we plan and work hard, life is beautifully still unpredictable.  The joys are always that much grander, and the painful parts you realize make you that much more resilient and help you grow.

WHACK!

Every point scored in volleyball is celebrated.   There’s a quick celebration for a play won, theres a specific cheer for when you block a killer hit, and there’s the patented ACE cheer for when a server has extreme accuracy to outsmart an entire court of 6 players.  Celebrations are key for when you are working so hard to work on that finesse and composure on the court, much like in life.  You must be proud of those big wins and small wins and learn from the mistakes and the pain.  That’s how we keep going.  It’s all just training when you think about it.

The energy of knowing that every second, every movement, every decision counts is amazing in Volleyball.  It’s an energy that never leaves the court, and has never left my heart.

As you spend each moment at work, or with family, think about the “half court shots” that happen in life, or that set that goes up that you know you put up for someone else to just crush.  I feel these same intentional movements today like in volleyball but now these intentional movements are with how I live my life and the person I want to be.   Every decision has had a lot of thought behind it, and the work put into it is carrying the ball that much further to the net.

But you are the only one who can throw the shot up there and learn from the outcome whether it’s good or bad.

As you gaze at each decision going out into the world, the way we watch the ball go up in the air for whatever it is we are aiming for, we see a flash of all the people in our lives who have trained or helped us think and be the way we are.  You are able to have faith in that shot BECAUSE OF THEM and because YOU BOUGHT INTO that mentality to some extent.  No one can make you get on board, you have to train yourself and believe in it.  Remember, all shots do not go in.  Only some, and only at distinct moments in life.  Trust the path, and embrace the outcome no matter what, to be a better version than you were yesterday.

Choose to Bloom,

Diane