Gardening in High Heels

cultivate a beautiful life

Five things that make winter suck less

Winter sucks.  I’m sorry to those who are on speaking terms with winter, but in my mind, it’s like winter is wearing pink and it isn’t even Wednesday.  Colds, shoveling, ice, freezing temps.  There’s nothing good about it.

Except these five things.

How to make winter suck less

Here are five things that make winter suck less for me and hopefully for you, too.

A good, warm beverage

I am all about a good cup of coffee.  In the wintertime, it’s even more important.  There is nothing more satisfying than wrapping chilly fingers around a steaming mug of deliciousness.

Tea is my thing right now.  I have a wicked cold that’s kicking my ass and tea is the only thing that warms, soothes, and doesn’t put my nerves on over-drive.

Celestial Seasonings Candy Cane Lane TeaCandy Cane Lane tea from Celestial Seasonings tastes fantastic (the peppermint covers the blah green tea taste) and is decaf.  I love the Gingerbread Spice, too.  The flavors are outstanding.

Snacks

Dude, you best believe I hibernate in the winter.  I just ate ice cream and now I’m debating something crunchy.  Usually I go for chocolatey/sweet snacks, but you can’t beat guac and chips or good homemade hummus (why yes, yes I did make that delicious hummus pictured below).

Homemade hummusI’m also digging these Fruit Vines from my Influenster #FrostyVoxBox.

Fruit VinesI’m not a huge fan of made-mostly-of-gummy-sugar-stuff treats, but I love the sweet strawberry flavor and the chewiness.  Very satisfying.

A full Netflix queue or a stack of books

There are days when I just don’t want to do a damn thing.  Living with a parent requires me to look like I’m a contributing member of society, but when I lived alone, there were weekends when I didn’t eat anything with nutritional value and ripped through seasons of SATC in a day.

I can quote each episode and I still cry when Aidan leaves for the last time.  Since I discovering the miracle of Netflix, though, we’re no longer exclusive.

Books are also a necessity.  Anything that you get emotionally invested in or are hilariously entertaining.  Yes Please was done in a weekend.  Bonus points if you’ve already spilled food on the pages.

A low-commitment and high-guilt-removing workout

I have to start training for the Pittsburgh Half Marathon soon, but when I don’t want to drive out to the gym just to use the treadmill, I gotta have backup.  I feel better telling myself, “Well I didn’t run today, but I did do __ instead.”

Plus, you may want to add a little physical activity to get endorphins flowing and combat the winter blues.  Or something.

I’ve been getting into kettlebells lately.  It’s a low-impact strength workout that gets the heart rate up.  I also love 10 minute workouts from FitSugar because we can all suck it up for at least 10 minutes.  And Yoga With Adriene is a new obsession.  Since my doctor said yoga is an acceptable workout, I feel totally justified by subbing this in.*

*I’m not a doctor, so don’t take this as end-all-be-all health advice.  I just told you to pig out, remember?

A project

When you finally have drank, eaten, read, watched, and worked everything out and can’t stand it anymore, something to focus your energy is necessary.  I’ll clean, knit, write, organize, anything to get my mind off winter.

30 Days of ListsHomemade bound book for 30 Days of ListsBonus: you can binge-watch and scrapbook at the same time.

I love doing #30Lists.  It gives you something to do every day that’s easy to manage.  Plus, I got to make my own mini-notebook for it out of Project Life cards.

Or you can try a new hobby.  Book binding or photography, anyone?

When all else fails, have a stock of beer on hand!

What do you do to make winter suck less?

Disclaimer: I received the tea and Fruit Vines from Influenster for testing and review.  These are my authentic opinions and everything listed is what I actually recommend to make winter less awful.

You’re not “too busy”

I’ve used the phrase “writer’s block” plenty of times.  It’s almost like one of those throw-away “excuse” kind of things like, “Oh I’d love to do __, but I don’t have any time,” and, “I’m just too busy.”  We all toss it out there as an explanation for why we can’t do something, but does it really mean anything?

Nope, not at all.  It’s a total cop-out.  We’re all busy.  We wear or busy-ness on our chests like a medal.

My point is: if you really want to do something, you’ll figure out how to make it happen.

This came up at a breakfast I was at the other week  The topic was running the Pittsburgh If you want to do something badly enough, you'll figure out how to make it happenmarathon.  Two of us will do it, one said oh hell no, emphatically.

And that’s totally cool.  I’d rather have someone just be real and be like, “Yeah no, that’s never happening,” than sit there and pander on about it.

“Well, I don’t have time now, but it might be something to do in the future…  Oh, it’s great that you’re doing it, but I’m just so busy.”

Oh, yeah?  With what?

That just sounds like, “Oh good for you that you have the luxury of spending time on that, but I am far too important and busy to spend time on myself” even if it wasn’t intended that way.

Why are we so scared to say, “I just don’t have an interest in doing that,” or even a simple: “I really don’t want to.”  There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you don’t want to do something.

Is it because if we don’t have the drive to run a marathon or start our own business, we’re looked down on upon?  It seems like it’s worse to admit that you don’t want to do something than never follow through on what you claim you’d like to do, y’know, when you have the time.

Similar to having to appear busy at all times, we have to seem like we have all of these desires piling up just waiting for the time, but poor us, it just never makes itself available.  It’s a totally vain to-do list since we can’t just say “Nope, not gonna do that.”

I’m totally to blame for using this, too.

I won’t pretend like I never say, “I don’t have time” or “This writer’s block is killing my vibe!”  I do it all the time.  I don’t have time to vacuum or take the patio furniture in or get a hair cut or remember to text my mother that address.

For the company Christmas party, we were asked to bring a dish if we could.  I had time off, but I didn’t make that a priority over other tasks on my list.  I said I didn’t have time and everyone knowingly nodded.  I’m sure if I said, “I had more important things to do and just didn’t feel like making a cookie plate when I got  a spare moment” wouldn’t have been as readily accepted.

And I probably shouldn’t publicly admit this, but I still have Christmas presents for my aunt and uncle that my mom left for me to deliver at the beginning of November; sorry guys, I really just didn’t feel like hauling ass to drop things off.

So with the new year approaching, it’s the perfect time to strike these empty statements from our vocabulary.  Make time to do what you want and let the other things drop off.  Be real with what you want to do and stop making excuses.

What excuse phrase are you guilty of abusing?

Do you know what you don’t want?

I have had this Clarity Gem from Clarity on Fire saved to write about for such a long time and I haven’t created it.  It’s talking about taking what you don’t want and transitioning it to what you do want.

Go listen to it.  It’ll only take 8 minutes.

Good?  Okay.  I was initially going to follow up Why Getting Fired Was Good For Me, but now it has more meaning in a different form.  Things come back when we most need them.

Like I wrote last week, I’m a little stuck in planning and not focused enough on doing without Knowing what you don't want is better than knowing what you do.making sure everything is perfect first.  Along with that, I’m not sure where I want to go with SynEr and my career and freelance and such.

As Rachel and Kristen say, when we get stuck in the suckitude of what we don’t like, that’s all we can think about sometimes.  We know really quickly what we don’t want and what we don’t like, but it’s harder to come up with what we do enjoy.

“I would do what I loved if I knew what I wanted to do, but all I know is what sucks.”

Makes perfect sense to me.  It’s hard to turn around and say to myself, “Here’s what I’m so excited about.”  Probably just like it’s easier to forget the good and focus on the bad.

When that happens, they recommend to take a second and think about the bad.  What don’t you want?  Then turn it on its head and figure out what the opposite is.  The example Rachel gave is feeling pressure.  The opposite of that for her is ease, relief, simplicity.  Kristen felt stifled, like she was suffocating.  The opposite for her was feeling spacious, like she had room to be creative and wouldn’t have to hide who she is.

This actually came up for me before I listened to the clarity gem all the way through.  I was having a discussion with Marissa and the same feeling came up for her, too.

My advice?  Figure out what you don’t like first.

Then I was trying to figure out what I want to write about for PCBN because Jason, bless his heart, was like, “Write about anything!”  In a total nonsensical paradox, it seems limiting to figure out what to write since there are so many options.

The easiest way for me to narrow it down was to write down what I don’t want to do and what angle I don’t want to take.  It really helped to put it into perspective and figure out, Okay, this isn’t what will work, so I can cross those off the list.

I’m also going through the Holiday Council with Stratejoy, and creating my plan for next year.  I settled on my “word” a while ago, but I want it to have a little more oomph.  “Focus” is a nice word, but it seems more like a command than a directive.  With this method, I know what I don’t like about it, and instead can find a word that has a little more power.

I’m really quite enjoying this opposite thing.  It’s perfect timing with New Year’s; we’re all trying to figure out our grandiose new direction for 2015.  I’m totally employing it to help unstick whatever’s stuck with me writing-wise.

What do you do when you need to figure out the answer to a big “something”?

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!

Questioning your way to happiness

Do you ever think about where you’d be if big life events were handled differently?  When I was in high school. I almost changed my acceptance at Penn State from the main campus to a branch (I’m sorry, satellite) campus.  My mother told me I was insane and I’m glad I listened to her.  Then, during my first semester, I was so close to transferring to Pitt or a school closer to home.

I’m still proud to say I was accepted at the UPark campus as an incoming freshman and graduated with two degrees in three and a half years.  But I never would have gotten the chance to say that if I changed campuses.

Going even further back, what if I pursued my desire to attend Boston College for no other reason than I just wanted to be somewhere other than Pittsburgh?  What if my parents hadn’t moved back to Pennsylvania from Texas?  I could have an adorable southern accent.

What about things that I didn’t choose, like what if my mom didn’t move out of town or my father didn’t get sick?  Or I wasn’t prey of a mentally manipulative person that made years of my life a living hell?

All of these things can shape you as a person.

I don’t think that’s dwelling on the past to ask these what-if questions.  If you fantasize about them and lose touch with what’s happening around you because you’re so wrapped up in these thoughts, then that’s a bad thing.  But I think it’s good to reflect on experiences that you have and appreciate where you’ve come from and where you’re going.

The keyword is appreciate.  Even bad things, like being late.  They give you strength, grace, understanding, compassion.  Maybe even happiness.

Moderation. Small Helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets to happiness and good health. You need to enjoy the good things in life, but you need not overindulge. -Julia Child

The other night at our Levo meeting, Britt Reints talked about the importance of practicing gratuity.  Being grateful is something we actively have to practice in order to find happiness, to appreciate life, to see how much you’ve grown.

Did you know that your happiness has a ripple effect?  There are three degrees of separation between you and the people who can feel the positive vibes of you being happy.

Did you also know that people who practice gratitude are 25% happier than people who don’t?

With all of this happy research to persuade me, I started my gratitude practice again.  I was doing for a while with Emily Levenson’s Project Miracles but lost it when I lost the accountability of doing it in a group setting.  But the fantastic thing is that you can pick it back up any time you want.

Sure, it’s hard to say, “I’m grateful for this shitty situation that I’m in,” but the more you do it, the easier it is.  And those thoughts are just as valid and relevant to your happiness as a positive thought.

What I love is that it serves as a guide for you to say, “This is what makes me happy.”  It’s there in black and white.  And it forces you to use your gut.  I’m horrible at making decisions; consciously thinking about what you are grateful for strengthens your intuitive powers.

So I challenge you to start practicing gratitude.  What’s something for which you’re grateful?  It can be something that shaped you into the person you are now or just something good that happened today.

Let’s Play

           

People Really Dug These

We Belong in the Garden Together