October 2015 - Stephanie DelTorchio

All Treats, No Tricks

Whether you shut out the lights and pretend you’re not home (Halloween humbug, really? ) or host or attend a Halloween party, here are a few ways to Treat yourself sometime today (or maybe tomorrow!).

Take a long hot bath. Go all in with bubbles or a book or a glass of wine. Here’s 5 reasons why it’s better than chocolate.

Get a massage. Relieve your week’s worth of stress, get the kinks out, and let your mind travel far, far away. More than a good feel!

Take a road trip alone, preferably with the music turned way up. Start by taking a drive around your own city or town. Amazing what you might see when you’re not focused on getting to the market.

Ditch the candy (you’ll just hate yourself in the morning anyway) and have a glass of wine, or coffee (they’re both getting rave health benefit reviews). By the way, chocolate isn’t so terrible. Blogger divinecaroline says it’s good for your hair.

If you plan to attend a Halloween Bash, or two, here are some great Halloween Pun Costume ideas. My thinking is if you have to explain the pun, give up: Put on a white sheet and cut out two holes for your eyes.BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Sources: Consumer Reports, divinecaroline.com, Travel Soul Therapy, Best Health Magazine/Canada, Prevention.com, Pinterest.

Awesome Celebration
Awesome Self-Love
Awesome Holiday

Grow Anywhere

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Awesome Growth

Forgiveness Free Pass

We are taught that when we forgive others we give ourselves the greater gift. And that when we hold on to unforgiveness it’s like ingesting poison hoping the other person will suffer. And that’s bad, and kind of a stupid plan to your being awesome today.

But what about the unforgiveness we hold against ourselves, huh? Aren’t we harder on us than anybody else? Who exactly does that serve? Um, no one.

As human beings we are very good at beating ourselves up for what we did, or didn’t do. It holds us back. We’re grown up smart people and we know this. But we wrap the noose tighter anyway. For years and years. How awful is that?

Lower animal creatures, like the squirrels in my yard, don’t seem too concerned about what they did or didn’t do yesterday. Or that the squirrel down the street muscled in on their territory, or ran off with a slimmer squirrel.

Every day they show up to do their job: to be squirrels. They gather a slew of acorns; shove ‘em in their cheeks until it burdens them enough to unload them in their hiding place.

But I sense no despair or self-loathing as they hunt and gather and unload. In fact, they chirp and chase each other in fun, until something bigger (my dog) comes along and chases them away. I sense that’s all part of the game, a hierarchy of cat and mouse. And the animals get it.

Today, let’s be like squirrels. Gather up all the things you can’t forgive yourself for doing or not doing and unload them in a hiding place.

Hand your FREE PASS over to the Universe.

Say: “I forgive myself for…[Insert a fault, any fault here]” and go outside and play like a squirrel, or bark like a dog.

Awesome Forgiveness

Preparation Ache

Every day we make a choice of what to wear. Sounds simple. Does everyone have this figured out but me?

In the morning I stare at the closet. Clueless. Don’t like this shirt, this one has a coffee stain, this doesn’t match, the button is loose here, too tight there, too bulky…it’s easy to get overwhelmed even before the sleepies are wiped away.

But this is probably going to be the easiest decision of the day.

Your mother (at least my mother) was right. She called it, “Preparation Ache”. The remedy: figure it out the night before.

In case you thrive on drama and indecision, get two outfits ready. A or B. This or that. Be daring. Make a choice. Go with it.

It’s my new policy.

In fact whenever I come across “basics” that fit well, I’ll buy them in different colors. This helps too. Sorta.

It’s early morning. I chose outfit B. Then rethink it and change into outfit A. I dry my hair, then change back to B and head out the door. I have a few appointments, a trip to the bank, the post office, meet up with someone for coffee late in the afternoon and finally back home…where I hang up my coat.

It’s when I notice my shoe choice. (Almost) the exact same style. One black, one brown.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Awesome Choice

Born to be Awesome

Despite everything we’ve been fed from pre-school on up, we weren’t born to be AVERAGE.

Being Average is (mostly) a choice.

Average people are mediocre at everything, by choice.

Average people sleepwalk through their day, by choice.

Average people read about other people doing great things, by choice.

Average people barely show up, by choice.

Average people waste a lot of time, by choice.

Average people wish for a lot of things, by choice (and because of all those pretty catalogs that flood mailboxes!).

It’s easy to fall into a day of being Average by excusing the choice to do better: I’m cold. I’m hot. I’m tired. I’m this. I’m not that.

One Average day turns into a string of days, then years; an entire lifetime goes by. You die Average.

But you aren’t Average, remember?

Take some time alone and write down everything in your arsenal to prove to yourself that you are way beyond Average. Don’t underestimate what you take for granted or poo-poo to others: musical abilities, fine art talents, physicality, mental prowess, spatial design, nurturing, salesmanship, mentoring, arbitration, culinary skills, etc. These are your superpowers.

Average people fear to admit their superpowers because it requires something be done with them. Even if you came from less than royal beginnings, my dear Royal Highness, you were born to be AWESOME.

Can I get an “AMEN!”?

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Awesome Self-Love
Awesome Discovery

Are you a successful failure?

We’ve all heard the kick-ass term: “Failure is not an option.”

Do you know where the phrase came from?

In preparation for the movie, Apollo 13, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles interviewed Flight Dynamics Officer, Jerry C. Bostick to learn what the people behind Mission Control are really like. Bostick said the staff remained calm, and when things went wrong they laid out all their options, and failure was not one of them.

The screenwriters later had a Eureka moment and came up with arguably one of the best movie lines ever: “Failure is not an option.” It’s become the rally cry of athletes, military, heads of businesses and governments, and a myriad of weekend warriors.

But flip this saying a bit, and one realizes: Failure IS an option.

Failure is an option.

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You can always fail. Now yours (and mine) may not be the super critical malfunction of an operating system that potentially leaves men to die in space, but…failing at a job or a career happens.

I spent years searching for the right path to take. I knew down in the dark deep places of my mind what the right path was, but rather than taking that road and risking failure, I chose other paths. Safe paths. Acceptable paths. Financially stable paths.

And I failed.

Over.

And over.

I wasn’t the deadbeat drop-out kind of failure. I was very good at being a very good diligent worker.

My walk and talk matched. Everything about me projected an honorable gal doing an honest day’s gig for a middle-class wage. And I liked my work and my co-workers. Even one boss, who was enormously gracious and supportive.

Actually, I was a “successful failure.”

Huh?

Every job I had was wrong for me because it didn’t scratch at the core of who I knew I should be. I’d mastered the fine art of successful failure by taking a career trajectory doomed to crash and burn. It killed me to know it.

You can fail at doing a good job.

You have choices in this world. Sometimes those choices involve risks. Take a chance on you and if you are going to fail, at least fail doing something you love.

When your gut and your heart tell you it’s not right for you, do your best to give yourself a get of out jail free card. Try doing that thing you are meant to do.

Give Yourself a ‘I’ve F-d Up Again, So What?’ Gift Card.

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If you fail? So f—g what?

If it doesn’t work out, or it isn’t everything you hoped it would be, go back and do that job again until you retire. I’m betting you won’t do it.

Are you a successful failure?

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Awesome Inspiration
Awesome Second Chance
Awesome Rewind

Hanging on to summer

Fall is here in New England and preparations are underway to ready the house for (ugh) winter. The lawn furniture is in the basement (except a chair that can be moved around to catch some elusive warm rays of sun) . The vegetable garden is bare; what remains is the dark rich soil, the womb that nurtured tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and basil.

But the mint! Ah, the mint, sticking it’s leafy tongue out against the cooler evenings, doing its best to extend Mojito Fridays! How we love hanging on to our summers.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Awesome Nature
Awesome Gratitude

Three Dog Good Night

Sad to hear of the passing of Cory Wells (74) lead singer of THREE DOG NIGHT.

My very first concert (other than being in one in elementary school!) was TDN at the (old) Boston Garden. My only recollection is that is was LOUD and FUN, and my date (Steve B.) was such a nice guy.

The movie, THE BIG CHILL, featured iconic songs from my high school days, and truth-be-told I watch/fall asleep to it often because the soundtrack is just freaking great.

Sharing my favorite THREE DOG NIGHT song, Joy to the World! Please explain to the young folks that this is NOT a Christmas song.

Cheers Bullfrogs!

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Awesome Nostalgia
Awesome 70s

‪‪#‎befat‬ (Be F–g Awesome Today)
‪#‎ThreeDogNight‬

Oct 23 2015

A Child’s View of Boundaries

“And then what happened?”

I asked this question of my daughter when she was about five years old. She’d drawn a picture of a meadow, with a brook running through it. There were trees and bushes. And a horse! (BTW: Not to brag, but she’s all grown up, and a talented artist.)

She began to tell me her story. The horse had run away from the barn (no barn in the drawing) and when the owner saw the horse was missing, he was very sad (no owner in the drawing).

As a grownup I wondered about the horse’s backstory. It must have been interesting. Why had the horse run away? Had the owner forgotten to lock the barn door?

To a five year old the past didn’t matter. The story took off from here, where the action started, and it had a sense of continuance. Not once did I sense fear on the part of my little storyteller.

So I asked…

“And then what happened?”

I’m paraphrasing: “The horse ran through the meadow, into the brook and then he ran this way,” she said, and pointed off the page. But that wasn’t the end of her story.

“And then what happened?”

It didn’t really matter.

The point is this: she gave the past its due very quickly, and then moved on to the next part of the story.

The exciting part.

The going forward part.

A child’s imagination is infinite. And get this, the story keeps developing and growing as long as you let it take the path. Of course the path meanders, veers off here and there. It can be never-ending, too. Wink-wink.

Adults censor. We go backwards and talk about the backstory, as if we can change it. We can’t. The horse is out of the barn, so to speak. We know that.

Yet we go over and over it again. Why?

Who gives a crap how or why the horse got out of the barn? We want to know what happens next.

Do we find the horse? Does it run to another town? Does it find new friends? Does it decide the barn was too confining and wants freedom to roam?

The horse story is your story. And the possibilities are pretty much infinite…

if you follow your path.

However zig-zagged,

detoured

or chewed up your path is.

Take a lesson from a five year old and see your life off the page. And ask yourself: “And then what happened?”

Awesome Children
Awesome Lesson

Success is showing up

“You can’t there from here.”

We New Englanders know the irony of this quote, but the fact is, if we don’t show up at all, we get nowhere, fast.

I’m not sure how true this is, but I read these two quotes attributed to the legendary Woody Allen:

70% of success is showing up. ~ Woody Allen

80% of success is showing up. ~ Woody Allen

And that’s NOT the funny part.

Perhaps as we get older it takes more “showing up” to be successful at whatever it is we are aiming for. I know writers with regular full-time jobs who get up two hours early to work on their projects. It’s that important to them. They sacrifice sleep and probably wine and sex to carve out time before anyone else in the house gets up.

A big part of your life is spent in the Monday through Friday trenches for sure. But remember that “thing”?

That dream?

Yearning?

Desire?

The thing that gets you all charged up in the middle of the night?

Yeah, that one.

Well, what have you done TODAY to move in the direction of your desire?

Before you can expect to see any progress you must show up. If you spend two hours, heck, one hour a day, that’s 365 hours in a year of dedicated time to follow that bliss, dream, goal, desire — whatever you want to call it. You know, 365 hours divided by 8 (hours in a normal work day) is just over 45 days in a year’s time that could be dedicated to whatever it is you want. And I am weak in math, so double check my figures!

The point is, stolen time can come from anywhere in your life. And if your “thing” is so important to you, you’ll figure out where you can steal an hour, or two. But do it.

Please do. Your tomorrow will thank you. I’m 80% sure that I’m 100% correct on this one.

Awesome Choice
Awesome Inspiration