Arminda Lindsay

Being On Purpose

Divorce Was My Doorway

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Episode Seven is where you’ll meet Shawn Richardson: mountain climber (three of the seven summits are complete), mother (three boys, ages 24, 22 & 19), and multidimensional mover and shaker in this world!!

I love this conversation and Shawn’s vulnerable sharing of the raw unknowns she confronted in the wake of her unexpected divorce from her husband of 22 years:

  1. Who am I?
  2. Why am I here?
  3. What do I want to do?

She openly admits that the journey she’s traveled to where she stands right now was catalyzed by her divorce.

My favorite part of our discussion is listening to Shawn talk about her oldest son, Charlie, and how his life with special needs, and how she’s interpreted his life, have been “way showing” and transformational for her.

Through her pioneering work, Shawn helps adults with special needs children achieve transformational shifts in their family dynamics, professional lives, and personal experience. 

I can’t wait to see what Shawn creates next and am certain you’ll be just as excited as I am to watch her shift our global consciousness around authentic workers.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below and thanks for listening to the show!

If you’d like to join our community, click here.

Focus

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focus

Charles Fillmore suggests “There is an inherent law of mind that we increase whatever we praise. The whole of creation responds to praise, and is glad. Animal trainers pet and reward their charges with delicacies for acts of obedience; children glow with joy and gladness when they are praised. Even vegetation grows better for those who love it.”

But there’s a flip side.

What you focus on grows, whether that focus is on something praiseworthy and valuable, or whether on something unimportant and without merit.

When I water my plants, they flourish; when I neglect and disregard them, they become limp and lifeless.

The same principle also applies to our mindset, thoughts and behaviors.

During a recent conversation with the sweetest CNA I know, she told me she is really bad at taking blood pressure and because she’s so bad at it, she’ll never be able to advance her position into a different environment that would require her to regularly take patients’ blood pressure.

Her mindset in this situation is currently “fixed,” as she sees herself as good as it gets with no option for anything different.

Her thinking about herself is negative and comparative to others and she (mis)believes she’s incapable and less than.

Her behavior is resigned to where she is right now and because she can’t ever possibly take blood pressures differently than she does right now, she’ll always be working in a place where that’s not a daily requirement.

Up until our conversation she was focusing on what she can’t do (take blood pressure readings) and so she was simply creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus, her fear and inhibition around the idea of being asked or required to perform this task were escalating.

I suggested a little game:

  1. Believe she’s capable of learning something new.
  2. Tell herself (out loud and at least once a day) she is great at taking blood pressure!
  3. Create regular opportunities to practice taking blood pressure.
  4. Update her resume in anticipation of a new working environment in which she will be using her amazing blood pressure taking skills!

What you focus on grows.

Focus on what you want to grow.

Now go bloom.

Practice creates talent.” — Steve Chandler

Loving you,
arminda

Peace by Piece

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Peace by Piece

Puzzles are curious toys: put all the related, but disconnected, pieces together to form a big picture, but don’t get frustrated in the process and quit, because the reward for sticking with it is intrinsic and will leave the player wanting to do it all over again, only a little bit more challenging next time.

Children learn the system of puzzle solving by first playing with puzzles that have only four or five components. Once they’ve mastered the small picture, they graduate themselves to larger and larger pictures, increasing the personal challenge with each subsequent upgrade in puzzle size, and the bigger the puzzle the more reliant on systems they become. Locate the four corners, then the border pieces, colors become helpful in identifying in which quadrant the piece might fit best, fill in the middle part, and so on, and piece by piece the bigger picture takes shape until it’s all completed, just as the picture on the box indicated it would look.

During a recent coaching session my client shared with me her frustration at how overwhelming her job currently feels to her. She detailed the multiple demands on her time in an effort to explain how impossible it is, and perhaps to justify her exhaustion and frustration. Maybe, she wondered, she’d taken on too much? Or just doesn’t know how best to manage her time?

I didn’t buy it.

Does she love her work? Absolutely.
Is she in her own self-selected ideal field? Definitely.
Is she feeling at peace in her work life? Nope.

This is a classic example of forgetting to remember that the picture on the box is the end objective and that picture is never created by dumping the puzzle pieces out of the box.

Remember that the vision of what it all will look like upon completion is just that: a vision, an image, a picture of what’s possible only after you take a bunch of individual steps to create that bigger picture. If you’re holding yourself to the standard of daily creation of the big picture you will experience overwhelm, frustration, resentment, exhaustion, self-judgment and fear.

But only all the time.

If you’re experiencing overwhelm and are not at peace, may I suggest you test a new system? Locate your four corners, then establish your borders (create boundaries), and notice the colors on the pieces because that will inform in which quadrant of your creation they might fit best, and lastly fill in the middle part.

This might take some practice, but play with it. Ask yourself what one next step could you take toward the bigger picture? Then take it, do it, create it, whatever IT is. Now, rinse, lather and repeat that process until you’ve put it all together and voila! You’ve got yourself a completed picture. Time to create a new vision and play with its pieces from a place of peace because you didn’t quit and walk away when you forgot to remember it was all a game, anyway.

Find your peace, piece by piece.

Loving you all,
arminda

Stuck is Optional

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We’ve all experienced those times when “stuff” happens, stuff that’s outside of our control, yet its impact is significant. And when those times happen it’s easy to feel discouraged, disappointed, frightened, out of control, stuck, miserable, alone, or even resigned.

During this Ask Arminda session I talk about how okay it is to feel that full range of emotions listed above (and please add the ones I’ve left off the list), but stuck is optional. Every time.

Let me know your thoughts and what your personal experience has been when you consciously rise above your circumstances to create something different.

Loving you,
arminda

Willing to Bloom

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Willing to Bloom

Nothing in the universe thinks there is anything wrong with you. 
— Robert Holden, Ph.D.

I love living into my magnificence and supporting others in their desire to do the same in their lives. Those “others” are my loved ones: my family, friends, neighbors, clients, workshop participants, retreat attendees, readers of my articles, viewers of my videos, vendors, store clerks, peers, classmates, followers on social media, and anyone with whom I come in contact.

What does it mean to live into your magnificence? To be exceptional? It means you are open to continuous expansion of self and that expansion is achieved through a willingness to surrender your belief system, to be open to another story, another possibility, to be vulnerable.

How do you commit the surrender? You expose your old stories, one at a time, and write new ones. You own your vulnerability. You face your fears. You make courageous self-honoring choices rather than constantly seeking to please those around you. You see that you cannot possibly be in service to others without first being willing to be in service to yourself.

“Can you see what’s really happening here? You are the actor in your own story, but you are acting as if your story about you is a biography, not an autobiography.” 
— Robert Holden, Ph.D.

What does this surrender look like? 

  • not resisting
  • not defending
  • not justifying
  • not hiding
  • not puffing
  • not pretending
  • not covering up
  • not excusing
  • not deferring
  • choosing YOU

Dr. Brene Brown teaches that “vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.” This living into magnificence takes courage, for it is a scary thing to face your fears. Why is that, you might wonder? Because fears cover up our deepest hurts and if our deepest hurts were to be exposed, well, that might be embarrassing, or painful, or lonely, or true, or all of the above! In fact, you might fear the greatest fear of all: that you’re not lovable or worthy.

“The real you is not afraid of love, because the real you is made of love.”
—Dr. Robert Holden

Dr. Ron Hulnick suggests that the easiest way to overcome a fear is to do the very thing that scares you while fully in your fear of doing it!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Marianne Williamson)

Step into your fears. You are courageous. Liberate yourself from its grasp on you. Believe in your own magnificence and not in your limitations. Be willing to blossom. One petal at a time.

Loving you,
arminda

Rear View Driving

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Rear View Driving

Have you ever put your car in gear and then driven to your destination by looking in the rear view mirror?

How did that work out for you?

Seems ludicrous, doesn’t it? No one could do that and keep the car on the road, ensure the safety of themselves, any passengers, or the vehicle, let alone cover any significant distance and arrive at a desired destination.

We have a tendency to steer our lives, our jobs, our relationships, and our dreams by looking backwards at what we (and others) have done in the past.

That rear view steering can look like:

  • Not trusting ourselves to make better decisions
  • Being afraid to risk anything
  • Never speaking up for ourselves
  • Not applying for a different position
  • Feeling resigned with how things are
  • Staying in relationships that don’t serve us
  • Thinking good things happen to other people
  • Assuming you don’t deserve the assignment/project
  • Resenting management for overlooking you
  • Believing you’re just not loveable or worthy

Much like it’s absurd to drive a car looking behind you, it’s equally dangerous to navigate your life based on events from your past.

The only thing the past provides is the journey that brought you here. Because wherever you are is only ever now.

When you strap the seatbelt across your chest and secure it, what do you see through the vast wonderful windshield of your life?

Where would you like to go, irrespective of where you’ve been?

Start driving.

When Fear Feels Real

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Oftentimes our fears feel very real to us and simply dismissing the fear as made-up seems trite. How can you use your fears as a starting point to a greater you?

The magic lies in the experience of fear, itself. When we feel fear it’s our opportunity to slow ourselves down and explore the starting point for that emotion of fear and then reframe and move past the fear so we’re no longer in our own way.

 

Steps

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stepsOne step at a time.

I once bought a pewter key chain in the shape of three footprints in succession. I was going through an extremely difficult experience and decided to carry the key chain as a reminder that I need only take one step at a time, one day at a time. There were many moments when I reached into my pocket or purse to clasp that key chain as a silent reminder to take my next step.

Approximately two years after I purchased it, the key chain broke in two from all its use, and my first reaction was alarm at what I would do without it, but I took a deep breath and slowly turned to look behind me and realized how far I’d already climbed and was delighted to discover that I no longer needed the physical reminder.

I’m so grateful for that climb.

What project or task or experience feels daunting and overwhelming right now?

Take one step. That’s it. Just one and then another. Before you know it, you’ll be turning slowly around to look behind you and will have your own moment of recognition of just how far you’ve come and just how much you’ve achieved.

I’m here cheering for you. You’ve got this!

Creating Dreams

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Are you guilty of “disguising your fear as practicality” as Jim Carrey so eloquently accuses his audience?

Why do we allow our fears to cripple us instead of creating our tomorrows today? (I’ve written more about how to create tomorrow today over on my allarminda blog.)

For now, just focus for the next minute on the words of comedian Jim Carrey, whose recent commencement comments are anything but funny.

allarminda.com | 2024