Hello!
Oh my, have I got stories to share with you today!
Writing has just started to take so much time to give birth to so please forgive me for not being brief or concise.
Every time I land in your inbox I must express my gratitude for your trust, time and attention. You’re on the inside, a special part of my tribe and we are clearly connected in both magical and practical ways. I know that because I’m here and look at that you’re right there. I’m smiling thinking about you and hoping my efforts bring you value.
That you can see yourself in parts of my stories. Insights that lead to glimpses of light where there were shadows before.
It’s the only reason I do this. Although, I’m not as regular in my outreach as I initial promised, but I’m working on my discipline and letting myself hit send, even if I don’t think it’s “perfect enough” to land in your inbox yet. Gosh darnet I just calculated that little “perfect enough” strategy has cost me a month of personal exchanges with you. I promise to try to be better, because without the back and forth of you and I in this thing everything else is just activity. You give it meaning.
Spoiler alert for the impatient and time crunched: Become more of who you already are.
Which leads me to why we’re both here. Yes, the big why of what keeps us connected.
Being at your best matters to me and it matters to you. You want to be the best you and give and receive the fullest kind of love there is. That’s so big, we might just have to work on that for the rest of our lives, and oh my goodness won’t that be fun?
So let’s get to the real juice. Because talk is cheap. Let’s discovery a small way to take action. My old time story for you today is on choices. It’s the coolest, not the best coolest but almost best part of being human.
We get to decide. We have absolute power over our own energy, own own response-ability.
Our lives unfold in the meaning we give our experiences. Our greatest potential is always within our reach, right from where we are right now.
It will change everything, without anything having to change.
Kinda magical, huh?
Here’s a true story (by the way did you ever read that magazine? True Story?). I remembered this and thought to myself this is how I did it, before I even realized what I was doing. A blissful ignorance that worked quite well for me until I started trusting the facts of a story. Lucky for me I’m having more and more incidents of this bliss.
Call it what you want, what I know is that it makes my life rich beyond belief.
I awe at the morning dew, I savor that first sip of coffee in the morning. I wake up with surprise and gratitude that I get one more chance to do it all over again. 🙂
So let’s time travel together to 1997. We (as in my family) had just returned from our tour in Europe and I was locked and loaded with two degrees, ready to change the world. Eduction has always called to me and I wanted to help people navigate their education. It’s the thread that has connected and continues to connect the dots in my life. Very simply I am here to build bridges for the in-between. Bridges from where you are not to the dreams you have for yourself.
I had landed at the Fort Lee Education Center, but I wasn’t happy with my role. *Please note that unhappiness is simply a message to nudge you in a different direction. I came home one day distraught and shared with David that the most meaningful thing I did everyday was make coffee, and that was not going to be enough. His loving advice was, “you’re getting paid a lot of money, so make the best coffee you can make.”
I reflected on this and my brain short circuited what I heard and translated it to was, “trust and just be, be at your best.” Which I did from that next day forward and within weeks, I was where I had always seen myself, helping other make meaningful steps towards their dreams. I was leading a program and on the cutting edge of the intersection between technology and education with Old Dominion University (ODU). I had a job and a title bigger than I’d ever imagined for myself.
Which is kinda the way it’s always worked. When I’ve been able to let go, be myself and follow my own heart miracles literally happen. The facts of the story become irrelevant.
Here’s how I did it. I became more of me, and I was recruited. The site director was opening a new location and needed someone to run the show at Fort Lee and support her as the assistant Site Director at the new ODU off site campus at John Tyler Community College. I said “yes” to life as it was in the moment and the rest is history.
We will never see all the layers of reality that are working in our favor if our focus remains on what we “won’t”, “can’t”, “shouldn’t- do, be, feel, think or say.” Where your focus goes your attention flows. Let me throw in a bit of neuroscience I’ve recently learned. Our brains are like tofu with a spotlight. Tofu takes on the flavor of anything it’s cooked with. Our brain in the same fashion will grown and rewire neurons depending on our focus (spotlight) and where it rests (attention).
- Making a choice is a decision to create a shift in your perspective.
- Invest in the state of your being rather than the what of your doing.
- Recognize choice as your personal power.
- The entire world unfolds from the inside. It is the space between our thoughts between our breathe and before our movement. It’s what I now call, Love.Being.Human.
The true value in this is when you apply it to your own life in some small way. The words I’ve shared with you will remain an abstract concept until you personally experience them. An experience no matter how small is the first step to understanding. Practicing and remembering our learning is our true wisdom. Let me know how I can help you. Reply to this email. I’m on the other end [vivian@viviancarrasco.com]. 🙂
Wild wise & free to be me,
Vivian
*this little jewel was dusted off and re-shared from an email broadcast to my Insiders on November 24, 2014