Arminda Lindsay

Being On Purpose

Bridge Crossings

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Bridge Crossings

In one day we crossed this magnificent bridge six times.

And it was an amazing and different view every single time, six times.

Different times of the day, different traffic patterns, different phases of the sun and moon, different conversations, different passengers, different purposes for the crossings.

Bridges are designed, engineered and built for crossing and for bearing immense amounts of weight.

We design, engineer and build bridges in our lives — personally, professionally and internally.

There is sometimes a cavalier tossing about of the burning of these bridges of our own construction, as if their destruction is of no consequence because a new and better bridge will appear on a different road to get us to the other side of another relationship.

Be wary of such thinking.

The only road you’re traveling that has need of said bridges is your own.

One road. One traveler. You.

Remember: Bridges are designed, engineered and built for crossing and for bearing immense amounts of weight.

Recognize your road is in need of many bridges, personally, professionally and internally. It is these very bridges, when we are willing to test them and to put the weight on them that is sometimes required in the crossing, that connects us to what’s next, who’s next, and what work is available to us for our own learning and growth.

Burning bridges is an avoidance tactic that will never allow you to progress personally, professionally or internally.

You must be willing to put your full weight on the bridge and cross — sometimes as many as six times in one day.

Just Go!

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Just Go

Recently I sat through multiple performances of Cinderella the Musical and heard lines single-timers might have missed.

One of my favorite directives was straight from the Fairy Godmother’s mouth:

“Don’t wait for everything to be perfect; just go.”

That tendency to wait for everything around me to be ideal is something I’ve experienced in real life. What about you?

Austin Kleon, one of my favorite authors, puts it this way:

“Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. . . . It’s in the act of making things and doing our work we figure out who we are” (Steal Like An Artist, 27).

And that gnawing fear you don’t know how to do what you think you might want to do, or don’t know even what it is you might want?

Elizabeth Gilbert insists we follow our curiosity, and not our passion when she says,

“Instead of that anxiety about chasing a passion that you’re not even feeling, do something that’s a lot simpler, just follow your curiosity.”

Yohji Yamamoto makes that path of curiosity even easier by inviting us to

“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.”

My point?

Be about the business of living your life and not waiting for something outside of you to get it started. You do you. Whatever that looks like. However that shows up. Reinvent yourself daily. Live.

And if you are willing to invest 30 minutes of your living to understand even more about Liz Gilbert’s invitation, her Flight of the Hummingbird speech on Oprah’s Super Soul Tour is fantastic:

Loving you,
arminda

Successful Mermaid

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Successful Mermaid

I get it. I really do. You’re upset because you’re not where you thought you “should” be by now.

Mermaid
Homeowner
Fireman
Mother
Floor Supervisor
Chairman of the Board
College Graduate
CEO

Success, as you’ve been defining it, still isn’t yours and you’re upset because other people seem to have “it,” while you clearly still do not.

And while it’s easy to look around us and see what we lack that others have in spades, it’s never about that.

Scott Adams delineates the haves and the have nots:

“If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power. I know a lot of people who wish they were rich or famous or otherwise fabulous. They wish they had yachts and servants and castles and they wish they could travel the world in their own private jets. But these are mere wishes. Few of these wishful people have decided to have any of the things they wish for. It’s a key difference, for once you decide, you take action. Wishing starts in the mind and generally stays there.
When you decide to be successful in a big way, it means you acknowledge the price and you’re willing to pay it.”

The dividing line, then, is merely a decision.
What will you decide to decide?

Your Personal Ground Zero

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Your Personal Ground Zero

SPOILER ALERT: There is no mecca to a better life.

Who you are is different from the thoughts you believe about yourself. That habit of believing your thinking is not who you are.

But only never.

That moment just before you have a thought about yourself? That’s who you really are.

Who you are IS happiness.

Your ground zero IS happiness.

Your natural and original state IS happiness.

There isn’t a magical elixir to consume, nor is there anything you can purchase, experience or renegotiate that will show you the way to inner fulfillment.

Aside from the biological needs of a baby and their only means of communication being tears, what’s their “natural” state of being? How you show up is who you BE.

We arrive happy and then spend a lifetime unlearning and forgetting about it, un-training every young child with whom we come in contact that happiness is the ever-elusive carrot dangling at the end of the proverbial stick.

Good News

There isn’t a 9-day intensive or a three-month workshop or a two-year masters’ program leading into a doctorate, at the conclusion of which you’ll get to defend a dissertation on your personal journey to joy and happiness.

You are not broken, in need of fixing, or on a journey.

You’re already there.

Your destination is you.

Practice Happy

  1. Notice your thoughts.
  2. Notice you are not your thoughts.
  3. Allow your thoughts to amuse and to entertain you.
  4. Do not make the mistake of believing your thoughts are true.

Serve It Up

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Serve It Up

Red Eye Flying

Ever taken a red-eye? They’re not my personal travel preference. But I’m so glad I was on this particular overnight flight.

There were just the two of us: me next to the window hoping to use said window to my sleepy advantage, and the complete stranger seated next to me on the aisle. No talking, just a brief hello and goodnight as we both did our best to comfortably position ourselves for an attempt at a five-hour rest.

Sometime around 2:00 in the morning, between awkward (and not very restful) head jerking sleep, I was awakened by my seat mate abruptly leaping to his feet and I watched him successfully catch a fellow passenger who fainted in the aisle next to him. After flight attendants had been summoned and the ailing passenger assisted back to his own seat (and administered oxygen), my seat mate calmly sat down again and fastened his seat belt and smiled at me as he apologized for waking me.

A bit wonder-struck at all I had just witnessed, I only smiled and assured him all was well. We said goodnight again, and both fussed around unsuccessfully to find another sleep position, and a moment later he invited me to use his shoulder. He said we both might sleep better propping each other than trying to figure it out alone, and at 2:15 in the morning, who can argue with that logic?

I slept soundly until the wheels touched down three hours later.

Fast Track Tip #4

And here is my fourth tip for you to instantly increase your emotional well-being: SERVE.

Service opportunities are rarely convenient, oftentimes they’re not fun (although not having fun is not a prerequisite to qualify for service), and they usually require a tradeoff of time for something else you’d rather be doing. . . until you show up for your service opportunity.

My airplane friend demonstrated selfless service — at the “inconvenient” hour of 2:00am — and because of his service a complete stranger was helped and I was gifted the most restful sleep possible in a most “inconvenient” and undesirable circumstance.  He also generously donated his in-flight blanket to me after witnessing me shiver (for longer than normal humans).

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”  ― John Holmes

When I’m feeling sad, sorry for myself, lonely, upset, and generally hanging out at the bottom of my ladder, laughing, singing, and dancing are certainly useful tools for improving my emotional well-being, but acts of service have a magic all their own: they get me outside of myself.

Being outside of myself allows me to see how incredibly fortunate I am to be able to choose my interpretation of the events of my life. And when I see that I’m the one choosing to be miserable (every time), I make better choices.

If you were to serve at your earliest inconvenience AND to do it regularly, what might that do for your emotional wellness? What would you choose? What acts of service ignite joy in the gifting for you?

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
― Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

If you want to be happy, be of service to others.

Finding Balance

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If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me about balance in my life. . . .

Ever wonder how to answer that question? Or how to create it in your own life? What IS balance, anyway? Does anyone have it? How did they achieve it? And better yet, how do they maintain the seemingly impossible? When you see someone else who apparently has it all together, do you long for a life that isn’t the one you’re currently living?

It’s okay. Let all that out. And watch this video.

I give you: A Discussion on Balance

Fast Track Tip #3

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Fast Track Tip #3

Curtain Rising

The auditorium was filled with a collective anticipation as the curtain rising revealed nine sequined bumblebees fidgeting in their leotards, buzzing to begin moving their newly-painted gold tap shoes to the well-rehearsed chords of the baby bumblebee song. It was the day I had anxiously anticipated for months and months, through all of our rehearsals and costume fittings and here I was: on the BIG stage.

Seated in the audience with my parents was also my Mom-Mom, my paternal grandmother, and she liked cats and monkeys, but I was nervous she might not be fond of bees. With each tap of my toe, hands firmly on my hips, I scanned the unseeable rows of seats for my people, certain that if Mom-Mom were there and I could see her seeing me, some magic might happen. What magic, I didn’t know.

And something magical did, indeed, happen, despite my not seeing anyone in the audience that night. As I tapped my way through the baby bumblebee song, arms and hands and head and feet all moving in rhythm and time to the beat, the anticipatory nerves and anxiety and fear of messing up my performance all lifted up and out of me, released into the nothing of dust particles scattering in the heat of the stage lighting. I WAS a bumblebee and I danced free — without nervous energy, or anxiety, or fear, or failure. I was pure bumbling joy and exhilaration.

After the performance when I did finally see my grandmother, she and I met each other in an embrace of bumblebee love and she gave me a slender glass vase that held three carnations (two pink, one white) and a tiny bumblebee, attached with wire to the stem of one flower, hovered just above the carnations.

Fast Track Tip #3

What I learned as a five-year-old bumblebee, I share with you now as the simplest method to increase your emotional well-being: just DANCE.

Skip, wiggle, do the Hokey Pokey, bring back the Electric Slide, or pick a decade whose dance moves resonate for you and duplicate them.

You don’t need a special someone watching from the audience. You don’t need an audience at all! This tip doesn’t even require gold-painted tap shoes, although if you’ve got a pair, definitely wear the tap shoes.

Spontaneous Dance Parties happen on the regular in my world.

Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before. —Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

And for your viewing pleasure, me: dancing.

Fast Track Tip #2

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Fast Track Tip #2

I Was Raised On Music

I have no memories that don’t include music.

None.

My parents loved music of all genres and had a record collection that I’m sure would be the envy of many vinyl collectors today and there was always music playing in the background of my childhood.

As a little girl, I loved accompanying my dad to the Southern States Feed Store early on a Saturday morning before the sun had had time to take the edge off the leftovers from last night’s dark. We’d climb into his red Ford pickup truck and he’d cinch the middle seatbelt snugly around my waist before clicking his own in place.

Then with his right elbow always slightly bumping me as he shifted gears, my dad would sing. His was an audience of one open-eared adoring fan with long blonde hair pulled into two ponytails on either side of her head. I knew every word to every song in his repertoire: from all the campfire funny songs to my personal favorite, “Old Man River,” sung in my dad’s beautiful deep bass that I could never match as I sang along.

Everything was always right in my world when my dad sang out loud.

One night — long after my sister Melanie and I had been tucked into bed — the finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture came crashing through our bedroom door and giggling with delight, Melanie and I snuck down the hall and into the kitchen, grabbed the broom and galloped through the living room riding the broom in our nightgowns and laughing so hard we fell off our “horse” and Dad laughed and applauded our interpretation of the piece before sending us back to bed.

Fast Track Tip #2

Buddy the Elf is the ideal example of how this tip works and its effectiveness. Buddy teaches us that “the best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.”

I’ll amend his wisdom in the interest of making this very important second tip usable year-round and irreligious:

The best way to spread inner cheer is singing loud for YOU to hear.

And in case you’re worried you can’t or don’t know how to sing, Buddy has some helpful advice for you: “. . . [singing] is just like talking, except longer and louder, and you move your voice up and down.”

There you go.

That’s your second of four fast track tips!

SING!!

Sing alone, sing along, join a choir, make up songs, create your own playlist for singing, sing to your children, perform for your dog, make your own microphone for car performances (and an extra to keep in the house), just sing.

Can you sing and be unhappy at the exact same time? Try it. I dare you. I double and triple dog dare you. Yes, I just went there.

You cannot remain emotionally low if you are singing. Fast track your emotional self up through song.

If you need one more “note” of encouragement, please watch my all-time favorite song about singing:

Emotional Drag

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Is fear creeping in on you again? When you’re experiencing the physiological “side effects” of fear, what do you do? Do you inadvertently hold your breath? Do you stop eating consistently? Do you bite your nails? Do you phone a friend? Do you . . . ?

What if FEAR is wearing a mask to make you THINK it’s fear, but it’s not actually?

That sneaky fear. . . always playing tricks on us.

You should probably watch just to find out what my drag queen name would be!

allarminda.com | 2024