Take the Limits off and Jump

Man Base Jumping

It is leap day. The one day every few years that we get an additional 24 hours to reach our dreams. Are you ready to take the leap? Moving yourself forward sometimes takes a great leap of faith that will honestly scare the crap out of you. Making changes should get your blood going in a way that pushes you past your limits. In order to become a butterfly you have to start out as a unlikely and sometimes unattractive caterpillar. But in a secret place God is creating a beautiful butterfly.

Source: ellenzee.tumblr.com via Terez on Pinterest

I have been working on project after project lately. Going from one uncomfortable place to another uncomfortable place. I am learning to be okay being uncomfortable. I know that during my uneasy state I learn the most. I understand the most. I am open to change. I am ripe for learning and living.

LIFE HAPPENS IN SEASONS
Remember the circle of life is a cycle too. There is going to be a winter time. During the winter are you preparing yourself for the next spring time in your life. The next bloom period when you cannot help, but be big in who you are. I don’t mean haughty. Think back to a time when you were riding high. Riding the wave, arms out, wind in your face. I remember those seasons. I love those seasons. I was ready for those seasons because I was coming out of a winter that was cold and cruel. It is winter time again. Here is what I am doing during my winter time.

1. Working on a Book
Yes, you read that right. I am writing my first book. I say first because I don’t know what God has planned for me or my life in this area. But I am taking a two subjects I am passionate about (fashion and social media) and putting pen to paper (no really it started out as and idea for a post).

2. Pushing forward my PR/Social Media Consulting Business.
I am looking to teach more classes and connect with more people who want and need my services. I love working with fashion boutiques and designers, but the skills are the same even if the industry changes. (always remember that)

3. Learning new skills.
I need to know what I am talking about when I am consulting clients about what social media platforms and strategies would be best for their business. That means I need to know about the new hot thing. How can Pose change your business? How can Pinterest drive traffic to your online content or eCommerce site? All this matters to their bottom line. I am naturally curious so taking time to learn about what is new and what is next doesn’t scare me. It actually excites me. I love sharing what I have learned with others. It pushes me past my limits. It is the uneasy feeling; that can hurt so good.

I am motivated to make a move in my life. Mostly when I feel like I have hit a winter. When I feel like I am stuck I have to find new ways to push myself to the limit. Being bound by your current situation is a hell of your own making. Choosing to step forward when all around you things seem shaking. That is the definition of courage. So I ask you what are you willing to leap for? And are you ready for where ever you might land?

If you want to know more about what I am doing or how to keep up with me. I would love to be your accountability partner. Complete the form below.

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Love,
Terez

You are…

I know I know you saw it on Glee or you may have known about them before, but I found them on Glee and I have been haunted by this song ever since. Enjoy! It’s not dedicated to anyone special just liked the vibe!

Getting What you Want – Diddy

Getting what you want…

My #2 Strength – Ideation

My strengths have brought me a very long way, but into the series of learning more about who I am. The second strength on my list is Ideation. Ideas flow from my brain like the river of Jordan. It takes great work to quiet my brain from all the things I think of and springboards from those ideas. Giving birth to something new ideas can lead to wonderful discoveries about who you are what you believe, and where you want to take yourself in life. After all Dr. Wayne Dyer tells us that we can do anything we think we can do. I have to believe that this is true. I continue to ask God to change my thinking and my how I see the future of my life.

Learning to lean on those who have this ideation strength have ideas that while great may not always be about them or who they are or what they want to do. I sat down over coffee with a girlfriend a couple a weeks ago. She wanted to use my ideation strength to develop some business ideas she had. But these ideas were not for me. They were gifts that I gave away freely to her for her to flourish. And because it is not my passion if I tried to use those ideas for myself it would be pointless since the ideas and strategies that were tailored just for her.

Knowing your strengths will allow others to use them in a way that will help you both. I enjoy sharing my ideas. They are fleeting to me because shortly a new one has come along. I have written a few unfinished articles and even a book in my head one winter when my car radio was stolen and I was all alone with my thoughts. The ideas are my gold mine to dig deeper within myself to continue to bring up nuggets that I can explore.

The power of your mind is as limitless as you would like it to be. You can decide that you want something and work diligently to get that elusive carrot dangling in front of you. So I am learning to align my thoughts to the things that I want. The people who I would like to attract to my life. The people who fill me up more than take from me. I am constantly excited to see what happens next. What idea will lead me down to the person I am truly designed to become.

Do you sharpen or dull your peers?

Proverbs 27:17 says, “iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”. Look around your inner circle. Do you sharpen or dull? Proverbs as a book in the Bible is filled with these simple one liners that cut to the heart of the matter. Iron sharpens iron means just that. When your kitchen knife goes dull running it against wood will do nothing to refresh its blade. But run it against another knife and you can be back in business in no time. You can be put to that iron to the test. You can sharpen its blade with a lessor knife, but they are still of the same kind of matter, metal.

God says that so one man sharpens another. So it begs to reason that being around others that are like-minded, goal orientated, forward thinkers, God centered, power players will help sharpen who you are. You will put them and in turn they will put you to the test. They will make you a better person. They will add to who you are and not take away. They should pull you up just by their friendship alone.

The analogy of crabs in a barrel is how I think of the black community in some circles. Why must you pull me down to get ahead? Why can’t we work together and go farther faster than we ever could by ourselves? A few weeks ago the conversation amongst my girlfriends was just that, we as black women don’t often find ourselves in real honest friendships with other women. Relationships where we are truly blessed by the other women in our lives to the point that we have to become better just to stay in there with them. Not in a competitive way but to continue to learn and grow from each other in a way that continues to make the whole better by being apart of the good instead of feeding to the evil.

I don’t understand people who continue unhealthy friendships that don’t help them go anywhere. When I come to my friends and ask a questions I come believing that the community is greater than I could ever be by myself so why not have a tribal council as Kelly Cutrone calls it. We all need one. We need the village that it use to take to grow us up from children into adulthood. Having mentors for every stage of life has for me been an invaluable lesson, one I learned early. I was always surrounded by people who were doing good in and around their communities. My mother believed that the village was alive in well and in order to show me more than what was at my doorstep she was going to actively go seek the tribal council for the things she had never experienced in order to expose me to those truths in my life.

I just read and article today about how mentorship. About how when in business learning in growing from other entrepreneurs mistakes will make your business better, for not having to whether those storms yourself. In turn making you a better business person. A vicious cycle of iron sharpen iron. Sometimes it isn’t what you know it really is who you know that helps you get ahead. I overheard a conversation some white gentleman were having the other day on the train. They were discussing how networks work. And that a good majority of getting into an ivy league school isn’t about the work that you do, but the network you create. It is about the connections you make with your fellow classmates who will become invaluable to you in the future when and if you need them. But it is how those circles run. You have to be in there to get the connection in order to get the connection. Another vicious cycle, but a true case of iron sharpens iron. Then the conversation turned to a book that one recently read from a Harvard graduate who wrote about the joy at work. How making what you love what you do. My girlfriends and I had also recently commented on the fact that these are not the conversations we are having with our friends. We are not engaging in rigorous banter that will leave people better than what we found them. My iron was made to sharpen more iron. We have to learn to leave people with more than what they came with. Teaching, learning, growing every single day. This is my new mission and if you are friends with me you better bring your ginsu and not a butter knife to my party.

So again I have to ask are you the knife sharpener or are you the cutting board? Because my knife will always need to be sharpened.

Lesson learned

What have you learned from the loves you may have encounter in your life? My new iPhone 4 (shameless plug) has been on fire this morning. The playlist took me through a thing. Alicia Keys was talking about lessons learned. Monica crooned on about her superman, now Day 26 wants to know are we in this together? And somewhere in between Beyonce said that if we don’t communicate then we are just in outter space like satellites. With all we know about love there is still so much more we don’t know. The when, the why, & the how may make us crazy. Love happens to us if we are careful with our hearts. We allow others to treat our hearts like trash. When relationships end if nothing else we should be about to sit back & assess the damage after the storm without declaring it a national disaster area. Sometimes not all of who we were survives. But what lessons have you learned?

When people who we considered friends hurt us do we decide that we can learn something from those segmented relationships. It can take years to heal who we were to who we are now. Lessons, tests, trials, tribulations only come to make us stronger? If they don’t then they should. They should make us better for having learned the lesson. I teach my children to learn something new everyday. I want you to take away something. No matter who or what you learn! Even years later the hurt can still teach you something. If it doesn’t then why did we experience it in the first place? I just know that when you talk it through we learn more about each other and ourselves than we will understand alone. Lesson officially learned.

The Amazing Race

The race is not always given to the swift, but to those who endure to the end. Your end may be different from my end. Maybe just maybe we are not in competition with each other, but in competition with ourselves. In and on the race that God has us in just to see how far we will go to get where he is looking for us to be. I know that without God I can do nothing. Like the song writer says I am like a ship without a sail. But to hear that my race is not your race is not his race or her race made me feel so much better about where I am going in life. I have always said that no matter what I am where God wants me to be at any given time in life. I look at it as a way to understand that there is no pity to be had about where I am along the race. And that no matter what God understands and see what I don’t. What we don’t understand he understands. He’s designed it to be that way. The amazing part of this race is that I am not in competition with my friend, neighbor, co-worker. I am only in competition with myself and where I am supposed to be along my path at any given time of life. I take these words very seriously. I was listening to Joel Osteen sermon tonight and I hear it loud and clear that I am not in competition with you or with him or her next to me, yet I am responsible for staying in my lane doing what God has designed me to do. So many times we beat ourselves up because we don’t measure up to what we see in other people’s drive ways, homes, bank accounts, offices, dress sizes, etc. But what if the person we were looking at to admire was really looking at us with admiration?

What if what we saw in others as golden they were really looking at us to emulate and guide them. See when it all boils down no one has it all together and what we think we know about others is really what we really wish we knew about ourselves. Honestly, I wish I could lose 20 pounds, I will find happiness just at the end of that race. My race may take me down somewhere else. God may have another place for me to put my energy, time, talent. Who am I to tell God he is wrong about that path he wants me on? I can just keep running my race and leave others to theirs.

This weekend I watched The Book of Eli and I was floored. To be sometime in the distant future we must take heed to the warning that without looking everything we find comfortable will vanish. That who we are will cease to exist if we are not careful to make it right. The Bible has clear instructions on every area of life you have a question in. But what floored me was near the end when Denzel’s character Eli put his hands up at the sound of Guns being pointed toward him and said “I have in my possession a King James Bible”. Then proceeded to verbally recount every word of it verse by verse. See his character had carried that same bible for 30 years reading it nightly. Absorbing it into every fiber of his being and living a life that God was proud of because he did as God had instructed. To carry the Gospel to a place where it could be appreciated and reprinted for the world to start again. The truth is this was his path a chosen carved out place where he was supposed to go. NO one could have walked that same path. Because it was not their place to. His faith carried him to his final resting place, but no before is task was done.

We are carrying around the word of God inside of us. Every single person on the face of the earth is a walking bible. And if we treated each other with more care rather than less care then this entire world would be a better place. Ignorance has no place. Racism would have no place to hide and all the other prejudices that envelope them all. Would face into a distant memory. Because sadly during their race some people pick up the nastiest of habits. Hatred is one of them. Learn to pick up love and share it with someone else. Including learning to love yourself for feeling like you are lagging behind in your race. You are right where God intended you to be.

You had me @ Hello…

I wonder if when you meet someone along the path of life who takes your breath away why is it so difficult to shake the feeling they gave you? Why does that feeling linger deep down inside of you like a bad fart that has lasted way too long in your presence. What do you do with those feelings? Is it ever a time you get over the one that got away?

As I come to a crossroad of life’s changes I wonder about love and loving again after being dragged through the worst that love has to offer life. A place that you don’t really wish on people you don’t even care for. I wonder what is next for this lover of life and love. I love relationships. I have always been a serial monogamous. I don’t know when the last time I was single was. It would take a we-gee board and a good chinese calendar for me to figure it out.

But what I do know is that I miss the old me that I will never be able to get back. The elusive “me” of old who is now different in so many ways she wouldn’t even be able to pick that old me out in a line up. More so because I believe that she would be so sad at the me that I have become. The me that is fearful and scared to be alone. The me that has taken so many in slings and arrows all just to save yourself from looking silly for love.

I don’t respect the deals I done with the devil just to keep it all together and for who? For what is more like it? I know that without these trials I would not be who I am today. I know that without certain relationships I would not be what I am today. I thank God for allow me to come through the other side of those difficult times with grace, dignity and moderate sanity. I know that this time will be a blink in history that will become a very good story, but I want to know now what is next. I know often times we as humans don’t get to know what GOD knows, but as I search for clarity answers and meaning in my life I wish I knew what I had waiting on the other side of this pain I feel right now. Because if I have lost faith in a lot of things I have not lost it in HOPE.

But when your hope leads you to daydream about so many nouns that are now virtually unknown. Like the song writer says “it was many years ago, when you stole my cool; you had me at hello”…

Understanding…

“But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?

13 Man does not comprehend its worth;
it cannot be found in the land of the living.

14 The deep says, ‘It is not in me’;
the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’

15 It cannot be bought with the finest gold,
nor can its price be weighed in silver.

16 It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir,
with precious onyx or sapphires.

17 Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it,
nor can it be had for jewels of gold.

18 Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention;
the price of wisdom is beyond rubies.

19 The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it;
it cannot be bought with pure gold.

20 “Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?

21 It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds of the air.

22 Destruction and Death say,
‘Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.’

23 God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,

24 for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
Job 28:12-21

God has the key to understanding, but that doesn’t mean that man should not continue the search for it. I feel like understanding for so many situations has eluded me like a bad Where’s Waldo page. I am lost, feeling that my professional goals and my personally unhappiness elude me like the carrot in front of the horse. I am so ready to get on with my life I am not enjoying the getting there part. I know that the journey should be just as fun as the result. But how do I reconcile this feeling of running in a circle in a race where I feel like everyone else is getting ahead. I plotted out my course yesterday. I sat down and planned out the rest of my academic career leaving just enough wiggle room to leave space for me for doubt. I know I should believe that God can and will do anything I could ever think to ask, but now I am really doubting myself, my worth, my worthiness as I face some very personal failures that for me I know would eventually come, but now that they are upon me I don’t know which way to turn. I know what I believe will be best for me, but I want to make the right choices not just for me, but for my family. My resentment of this failure has forced me to question every next step not wanting it to be like the last.

Where does understanding dwell? I want to be in the neighborhood of it if possible. I want to be near the place where I can see over this hill in my life so badly that I want to carry a step stool everywhere I go just to make sure that when I get close enough to the top I can just take a peek. But the point I have to keep reminding myself is that God has me in the right place and the right time for a reason. But I am in search of answers. What am I missing that I haven’t been able to progress? Usually God will keep you in the same place until a job is done. What challenge or obstacle course is left for me? What item have I not gotten a handle on?

I recently took a strength test for work. Sometimes working in a university they want to do a lot more learning than what the law should allow, but they don’t. They want to know how you think what you are good and why in order to make sure they are using every bit of what is usable to make your job better. I know my strengths are communicating with others. Counseling students to do the best they can. I know that may seem like an oxymoron in my job as a person who tells students how much money they owe the university. But they are being taught valuable lessons. They are learning to follow-up on what they say they are going to do. A strength is being a leader. A motivator, a person who is good at giving advice. While I am very bad at taking it, or sticking to it. I am getting better at being a good listener. I want my friends to see that I am really there for them and that the street in which our friendship resides is not just a one way on cul-de-sac. I want them to understand that life is not always about me and my problems. I need them to know that. I’ve come a long way just to be able to say that. I realize the with age come wisdom. But with youth comes this idea that you have it all figured out that quickly fades the older you get you realize just how much you don’t know.

Oprah (I know starting a sentence with that name usually is a sure-fire way to get an eye-roll, but bear with me) has a column in her magazine every month about “What I know for Sure”. Every month it is some insightful commentary about what you have learned on your journey that you an actually hang your hat on. The tangible in the world of mystery. But what I know for sure is that God is not through with me yet. The days ahead of me are far better than the days behind me. And that I have to sit down and write out the goals I want to put in motion in my life. The only way to accomplish a task is to have it laid in front of you with clear markers and signs of success. Although you may have some setbacks you will never get to the place that you were trying to go if you don’t know where you have been and what path to take to get there. So my path to understanding my be riddled with more questions than answers. I can sleep at night knowing that the answers exist.

The Juggling Act

Do you ever feel like there are enough hours in the day to possibly get all that you believe you need to get done? Well, you aren’t alone. I know so many Parents who are finding it increasingly difficult to make it all work. I read an article in Redbook from the March issue about Making it Work.  (Don’t judge me I am behind on my pleasure reading). But what struck me about this article was that the Press secretary for Dr. Jill Biden quickly became my hero. A working mom, with a job any Public Relations girl would give her right arm to have. Well I would! I would love to work in the white house, and having the opportunity to do government relations would be better than butter pecan ice cream. Her and her husband made it work between two cities and 1 toddler and 1 baby on the way. I was inspired by her story and it made me truly evaluate all that we as women do to Make it work. We give 100% of ourselves to everyone, but ourselves. We give our jobs, kids, husbands, friends, so much of our time do we even make time for ourselves. This year I said that I would do less juggling and more “Me” time. we owe it to ourselves to take care of our only asset. US. I want to be a better mother because I give myself much-needed breaks. Some women are gilt ridden into believing that after all the time spent away from our families we don’t have the right to ask for a few minutes to ourselves. Well! Guess what you do. You have every right to ask and have some of our prayers answered. Put yourself back on your priority list. You will see that giving of yourself requires you to be at the top of your game. So push the pause button, don’t allow any balls to drop, but know that you should do yourself good too!