I don’t like living this way!

OMG, how many times did I say that to myself the last couple of months of 2015? Hell, I even wrote it on my whiteboard. Must have been some serious sh*t happening there.

And what was it all about?

Things that the year before I said I was going to do differently.
And here I was doing the same damn thing … again.
I made a Facebook video recently in which I ventured,

“if you want your life, when you come to the end of 2016, to look different than it looks here at the end of 2015 — guess what! gonna take a little work on your part, gonna take a little thought to decide what (if anything, of course) you want to change, and then how do you do it? what’s it gonna take? and then put a plan together and be willing to work your plan.”

Here’s the Cliff Notes version:
I got a little bit of response on that. It’s so freaking obvious, and yet it was like an A-HA moment of epic proportions!

And of course we’ve all heard that famous quote attributed to Einstein or Carl Jung or somebody smart that goes something like this,

“Doing the same things over and over expecting a different result is
the definition of insanity.”

I’m freakin’ nuts then, because alas and alack, I do this. Maybe if I try it one more time, just like I’ve always done it, things will turn out differently.

NO. THEY. WON’T.

Check the history. Check the lineage of the activity.

How did it turn out last time you did it that way? And the time before that? And the time before …

<heavy sigh>

Well, huh, it always seems to turn out the same. Imagine that!

We glide through life on autopilot  living our one precious life by rote (and my pun-laced brain, at hearing this, cannot help but shout, That’s all she rote! That’s all she rote!<another sigh> It’s true).

Do you realize how incredibly sad this is?

Do you realize how very much we miss of this incredibly beautiful world, this unbelievably beautiful life when we live this way? Distracted and caught up letting who-knows-who do who-knows-what to run the show.

One of my favorite writers and people on the entire planet is the adorable, hilarious, and occasionally cranky Anne Lamott. For the last several weeks, one of her quotes keeps shoving itself in my face on — you guessed it — FACEbook. Here it is:

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen. Repent just means to change direction — and NOT to be said by someone who is waggling their forefinger at you. Repentance is a blessing. Pick a new direction, one you wouldn’t mind ending up at, and aim for that. Shoot the moon.

Oh.My.God. This.is.SO.me.

Almost.

Wait! I’m not 65 yet. I have a few more years (3) till then.

It’s not too late! It’s not too late!

I can still make changes. I CAN mix it up. do differently all those things I hated repeating ad nauseum.

And yes indeed, sisters and brothers, if you — if I — want things to be different at the end of 2016, at the end of the month, at the end of the week, at the end of THIS VERY DAY, I need only look to myself — to that wise and creative soul inside me — to make that change.

Know this: No one can do it for you. No one else.

So … are you seeing yourself in what I’m saying here? I truly hope you are not — I’m pretty sure I am the only one on the planet with this maddening affliction.

BUT if you are, I urge you … I beg of you … don’t wait too long.

I’m starting TODAY. Won’t you join me?

Love you, mean it!
Steph Marks