DAY SEVEN

DAY EIGHT

DAY FIVE

I have always been a very hyper person, very energetic. Even when I am watching TV and relaxing I am always doing something, making something. It seems like I am always in a rush too… time, time, time… the most important thing ever. I don’t have time for this, I need time for that, if I had time then… You can imagine my driving. Even if I am just going to the market, I am always rushing: “I really don’t have time to sit in the car and drive around for hours” kinda attitude but God wanted me to change that so every time I was going to cross the trolley tracks, I had to stop because there was always one coming… sometimes two in a row. Needless to say, I hated that and I would scream inside the car: “Why? Why me? Every time!”

One day when I was waiting there for the trolley to go by, I texted my wonderful coach and told her about it. I told her I hated it, that it made me mad, that I didn’t have time for that, etc. She replied saying: “I want you to observe the trolleys from now on. Notice how many wagons they have, what color they are, do they have commercial decals?, how many doors do they have?, do they all look the same?, etc.” I replied: “Yeah, you just want me to distract myself by doing that but that doesn’t change the fact that it happens all the time and it drives me crazy.” I didn’t want to do it but I did it anyway… to prove her wrong. That was not going to change anything…

Where I lived at the time, no matter where I was going, I had to go over the tracks just to get out of my street, so there was no escape. I did the experiment for three days… First day: lights and bells are going, the bar is coming down… yeah, yeah… three red wagons, two are the same, one looks older. They are all red… no decals, three doors, twelve windows… Ugh! An hour later again… three wagons, two red, one blue… the blue one has smaller windows… no decals, three doors… twelve windows… three hours later… three wagons… all with decals about a TV show, they all look different, they seem to be newer wagons, different design, straighter lines… Second day the same thing… On the third day I get in the car as usual, drive down the street and stop in front of the tracks because again, the lights and bells are going and the bar is coming down… but guess what? When I realized I was starting to analyze the stupid wagons again, I start laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face. What’s wrong with me that this lady has to find a way to distract me so I don’t go nuts because the trolley is going by? Yeah, welcome to my world.

The next book I was told to read was Rejection Proof. It showed me how falling on our faces is not always bad. It is true what some people say: Our mistakes are just lessons. Of course, swallowing a failure is not easy but they always teach us something even if we don’t see it right away.

“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” Wayne Dyer

DAY FOUR

At the beginning of my work with my Life Coach, even though I was willing to do whatever it took to change my life, I had so many automatic reactions that I had a hard time adjusting. But this woman is amazing; she was patient, she was kind, and she was very supportive, so the worst went by quickly. One thing she did that always took me by surprise was that every time I felt sad, heavy or overwhelmed with our work, she asked me to create, to use what I was feeling to make something out of nothing and let me tell you, what came out blew my mind every time. Processing the things that made you who you are today is not easy. We have so much that doesn’t belong to us. We carry so many ideas and believes that are not ours. But it takes patience and time to recognize them to be able to remove them… that process is so painful.

In one of our sessions we touched an issue that was hard for me and I really had a hard time working on it. It was physically painful to even talk about it. I spent days crying without knowing why. I had stuff inside that were making me feel horrible and I did not know how to get them out. When I told my coach that via text, she told me to create something, to put all my feelings in a piece of art and see what happened. I did… I could hardly see what I was making because I was crying like a baby but I created something that reflected what I was feeling, the heart on the photo…

Last year it became clear to me that you do have to be present all the time or at least, try to be. You have to pause before you open your mouth. You have to think about what you want to say and analyze what you are feeling to be able to filter it all before you speak. We are responsible for what comes out of our mouths so we can’t just say things carelessly. We need to worry about other people’s feelings because there is no need to offend anybody. I was always “brutally honest” and that was hurtful to others because I had no filter. For years I tried to change that but it wasn’t until last year that I could. You can be honest without hurting people. I learned how to.

My coach made me read a lot of books. Some I liked, some I loved. I am going to share with you the stuff that I read and listened to thanks to her, those that really helped me because I think it is important to put them all out there. Someone might find them helpful and if I can help one person, that’s a bonus.

The first book she asked to read was: Women who love too much by Robin Norwood. I hated every page, I fought ever word but at the end I realized how true all of it was. A couple of things were way off but pretty much everything else she described was ME. I recommend this book highly. The main thing I took out of this wonderful book is, if you want to see change around you, change yourself: change your habits, change your thoughts, change to become a new and modern version of you… it’s the only way.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” Thomas Merton