Gardening in High Heels

cultivate a beautiful life

Be aware

Happy Memorial Day!  It’s a perfect day to relax, spend the day with people you care about, and remember those who were brave enough to dedicate their life mission to protecting us.  So it’s the perfect day to talk about favorite quotes for today’s Blogger, May I theme.  There are so many good quotations, I had a hard time picking one and actually wrote an entire other post before this one.

To be a good quotation, I think it has to be short, simple, impactful, and incredibly direct..everything this sentence is not.  There are two quotes that usually ping around in my brain.  One by Abraham Lincoln, and this one from Baron Batch.

Be aware when your time is up.

As I’ve written before, I attended the 2014 TEDx talks back when it was TEDxGrandviewAve (now it’s moved up to TEDxPittsburgh, woohoo!) and heard some great speakers.  Of course, I was there for  Britt Reints, but I was captivated by Baron Batch.

I didn’t know much about Baron before the talk.  I saw on the bio page that he was a former Pittsburgh Steeler and gave that all up to paint.  I was ready for some, “Follow your dream, don’t let things get in your way” kind of speech.

But no!  It was much more, “Hunt your dreams down, work harder and faster than you ever have, hustle, and strong-arm things out of your way.”  I was ready to run through a wall after I heard him speak.

I’ll watch the recorded talk today and still want to run through a wall.  Seriously, watch it.

When I went to the Creative Soul Weeknight Retreat, we made boxes with paper or paint or stamps or little plastic dinos or fibers…whatever our little hearts desired.  In mine (which I’ll take a photo of and share later..oops forgot!) I have Baron Batch’s quote written out.

Be aware when your time is up - Baron Batch

Be aware that you only have a little time here on the planet, so make it count.  Be aware that there’s always a ticking clock getting closer to the end, so make something worthwhile now.  Don’t squander the precious seconds you have – in a relationship, a day at the part with your kids, when you sit down to write.  Be acutely aware that time is pulling you away.

I could go on forever, baby.  (Bonus points if you know where that is from.)

Britt took that energy of the Creative Soul Weeknight Retreat and unleashed it on a whole weekend.  I’m so excited for the Creative Soul Retreat this fall for more time to reflect and create and play with new things.

A weekend of nothing but this laser-focused creative energy sounds absolutely fantasticly like where I need to be.  And seriously, it’s at a gorgeous hotel in downtown Pittsburgh with other creative souls.  Who’s with me here?

So what’s your favorite quote?

The one that makes you want to run through a wall and get shit done.  Or the one that calms you after you’ve run through a wall and need to refocus?



I was not asked to gush about the Creative Soul Retreat in this post, but it seemed like the perfect time to share it. If you’re in Pittsburgh or can make it here, I’d love to see you there. And early bird pricing ends June 1!

Not my circus, part two

I was reading a blog post from Clarity on Fire and it hit a nerve.  This was perfect timing because I was thinking something similar to the situation in the post it came from – not the part about breaking up with toxic friends, because I’m pretty good at the moment, the part about people not being respectful of my time.  Rachel explained my sentiments pretty perfectly:

Personally, I tend to get pretty miffed when people are rude. Take, for example, when I schedule a free breakthrough coaching session with someone, we confirm the call the day before, and then they totally ghost me. They don’t bother to send a, “Sorry, can we reschedule?” email or a quick text that they can’t make it. Nothin’.

Part of my day job duties include scheduling appointments with people so I can help them with their marketing strategy or program in general.  The other day, every single scheduled appointment I had didn’t answer when I called them.  It wasn’t like I was Rambo-ing into their day and catching them off guard, these were mutually agreed upon times.

It really kills my day’s momentum when I have to stop what I’m doing to make sure I call these people on time.  It takes time for my brain to shift gears and prepare for the next task at hand.  Similarly, it takes time to refocus on what I was doing.

It smacks of not having consideration for the people around you.  I understand that some people forget or something comes up last minute; I’m not begrudging anyone of that and I’ve been guilty of it myself.  I’m talking about people who make it a regular occurrence.  Why is this okay to say to give the message that you just can’t be bothered to be considerate?

We were taught to say please and thank you.  Well, I hope we all were.  How many of you didn’t get a thank you on Halloween when passing out candy, hmm?  This self-centered attitude we’ve adopted is a big problem.

What I loved about the Clarity on Fire post is this simple reminder:

What other people say and do is about them. Not me. In fact, it never says anything about me.

Their actions are not a reflection of me.  I am not responsible for people not answering the phone.  Thank goodness we have a good note-taking system at work to prove that I did call them if there’s ever a dispute!  I am also not responsible to parent someone’s child and demand a thank you for providing free candy.

I can only control my actions.

It reminds me so much of “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”  Rachel even said that in her post, too!

What’s great about this is it works in both the positive and the negative sense.  Of course, if you blow off an appointment, it says you don’t care much for other people’s time.  On the flip side, if you do give someone a heads up that you will be a few minutes late or you go out of your way to hold the door for someone, it says that you are a respectful individual.

So today I’d like to ask you to bring back politeness.  Leave something in the world today that shows you are a decent member of society.  Let’s bring back being considerate and thinking about how your actions will effect others and how your actions make you look in turn.

Comment below and let me know what you’re going to do today to make yourself a reflection of how you really want to be known!

What other people say and do is about them, not me

PS: Don’t forget to enter the Miglio Jewelry USA Giveaway!

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