Appreciating vintage beauty
I’m not old. I’m VINTAGE. There’s a huge difference between the two.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Be powerful not pitiful
You can’t be both powerful and pitiful at the same time.
To go forward replace your self-talk. Cancel: “If Only I were…” and replace with: “I Am good enough to…”
Some factors, by your own doing (or undoing!) keep you from your goals, dreams and desires. You need to get real with these and stop using IF ONLY as a crutch.
You have an enormous reserve of gifts and talents to make an incredible impact on the world — even if your world is limited to your own home, neighborhood or circle of friends. Start there.
An example:
IF ONLY I were taller I could be an NBA player. (or WNBA player)
Insert BUZZER SOUND here. Height alone will not guarantee that you’ll get drafted by the Boston Celtics.
Are you also super talented? Been told you’re the next Larry Bird? Driven? Insanely gifted from three-point territory? Have you practiced this craft of basketball? Know the game inside and out?
Still might not get you a green jersey.
Saying “If Only” is the beginning to every excuse that keeps us from delivering our best work — personal and professional.
You don’t get to sulk and moan and grumble that you’re not playing in the NBA because you are not TALL. Many SMALL players make it on an NBA team; plenty of TALL ones don’t. It’s one box to check, that’s all, but not the end-all, be-all.
You are GOOD ENOUGH TO excel in (at least) a hundred different things. Find a few that peak your curiosity. Follow them.
Don’t point at something that’s near impossible and sulk in the corner with your IF ONLY crying towel. Move on to the next thing and the next. Aim for the possibilities.
Give up the WOE IS ME for the WHOA! IT’S ME!
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
The mirror doesn’t lie
“Magic mirror, on the wall – who is the fairest one of all?”
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
I remember the day my mother said she didn’t recognize her own face. For clarity, she was completely mentally intact. Her issue was one of acceptance.
“When did I get to be an old lady?” she asked no one in particular.
She’d washed her face and looked in the mirror and saw a stranger. Her point being…just where did all the years go?
The woman inside was twenty something. Taunt, lean, fresh-faced and bright-eyed. Not the gray, sunken and pale reflection that reminded her of great-grandmother Catherine. (Her assessment, not mine)
Mirrors might as well be broken into pieces for the good they do for our self-esteem.
Because what we see is imperfection.
We use mirrors to nit pick and judge the importance of our physical reflection. Every stray hair in weird places or brown spot or crease makes us wish for a time machine to the past.
But the world sees you in ways the mirror can never reflect — your gifts, talents, skills, personality — the real you.
What we mourn as loss, deterioration, aging…are signs of life.
For all the funny memes and jokes about growing older, we know the truth about what we really see. We just need to make the mirror-head connection.
Lines are smile markers.
Creases are historical evidence of tears divided between happiness and sadness.
Wisdom proclaims itself in graying temples.
You’ve fully ripened like a fine wine. Sweet, deep, full-bodied (oh yeah I said it).
So what if your softening roundness is deposited here and there. It’s where you store your great and varied knowledge — which would look really weird if it were clumped all in one place.
No matter the reflection, the mirror doesn’t lie. The mirror tells us the truth. It says you have lived.
Today, spend time making peace with your reflection. Honor it. Love it. Take care of it.
Tell the reflection that what you see is a mask; a small fraction of your entire being. Yep, it’s changing. Yep, it’s thinner, shapelier days are behind you, literally.
Please know that your inner heart and spirit are where physical flaws go to die because they’re superficial and supersede death.
No one will come to your funeral and say: S/he had a perfectly shaped nose or a enviable jawline.
No, they’ll remember that you were here by how well you used your time and how you made them feel.
Take a good long look in the mirror. Got it?
Now go smash the crap out of it.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Don’t blink
This moment could become the best part of your story…
And the reason is because you get to choose what you will do. You get to make all the decisions.
This is how it went for me:
During the summer the neighborhood kids would choose sides to play sandlot baseball (or some other game) in the city park. There were two captains — the popular, strongest, most athletic, BOY — and the line-up of the rest.
You sort of knew your rank before the captains started to pick the best players.
The fat kid. Slow kid. Four-eyed geek guaranteed to whiff. The GIRL…we knew we’d be chosen near the end. You could hear the groans of the captains and their near full roster when the fat kid and me parted ways to opposing teams.
“See you on the bench,” he said.
Lucky to be on any team and never a chance of ever being captain.
As an adult you don’t need to wait to be picked in order to become captain. Whether you become a team of one or a team of many, it’s your vision that becomes the driving creative force. You get to pick the players and create your own team.
Many people are comfortable being “players” because then you don’t need to make any choices or decisions. You follow the captain’s orders. Get a hit or draw a walk — just get on base to advance the vision of the captain. Do that and you’re a player. Do that and you won’t warm the bench.
It’s seducing to watch the captains we admire excel at the thing we want to do. It’s also safe, and boring, okay if your goal isn’t to become a captain some day.
But you don’t want to be a bench warmer or a player.
So, when the inkling of opportunity presents itself, that is the moment to put on your courageous jersey. Decide to choose yourself as captain. Then you get to pick your teammates and call the plays.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Stay with me
Don’t quit on people who matter.
They may need to be loved only in our hearts. A safe distance away. To keep them from messing with our heads and getting on our nerves or under our skin.
We know they are hurting and we know we should be the bigger person.
Close our mouths when we have SO much to say. Unfurl our fists when it seems the way out of frustration is to punch the living shit out of something.
But you are the kinder and saner soul in this relationship. That’s why they irk you and they don’t know it (or maybe they do?). That’s why you pray for them. Send them light and rainbows. And draw the hard lines in order to protect yourself.
You’re not a bad person for keeping them away. It’s how you survive and maintain your sanity and live out the day in front of you.
But you can’t give up completely on the people who matter. Even after they’ve taken you down so many times. You find a way to get back up and tangle with them again and again. Because when all the anger, bitterness and contempt is peeled away, you care. Because that hurting person is part of your story.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Don’t blame me
The problem with blaming somebody else
…is that the people you point out often are pointing to somebody else, and so on.
The honorable person doesn’t use blame as a form of damage control. The person we strive to be is one who stands up and says:
Yes, I took your tuna sandwich from the office refrigerator,
Yes, I put the dent in your car with my shopping cart,
Yes, I turned my head when I walked by the homeless guy,
Yes, I didn’t vote because everyone running for office is an idiot.
This is a person who is willing to take responsibility to show us…
1. She’s human.
2. She fails sometimes.
Maybe her behavior runs deeper than that because she’s too lazy to make her own sandwich. Maybe her basic needs aren’t met. Or she’s afraid. Or late. Or stressed. Or hurting. Or broke.
I want to take responsibility for my thoughts and actions. I strive to do this every day, with varying degrees of success. It’s important to me because I become what I think and do.
It doesn’t mean taking responsibility makes you a victim. Don’t let it. Returning something you borrowed or broke two years ago might resurface the person’s anger towards you, but you’ve fessed up and made things right.
You don’t need to knock on every door and apologize to every person you’ve blamed since you were nine years old. And don’t get a case of the “guilties” and start handing out freshly baked cookies to sad-looking strangers on park benches. Although that would be a random act of kindness.
Just take responsibility for what you do every day — the small shit that inconvenienced someone’s day or forced someone to eat lunch from the vending machine.
If we don’t accept responsibility we fail on a humanity level. Be responsible for your corner of the Universe.
Stop blaming the dog.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
The Number One Best Response
When you know deep down inside that the response you WANT to give might get you in big trouble.
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Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Second Chances
Maybe you missed it all together.
Or you weren’t in the mood. Not “feeling” it.
Perhaps the timing felt “off”.
Whatever the reason or excuse for not jumping at the chance the first time, sometimes there’s an opportunity for a do-over.
Take the Mulligan.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
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One Heart
When the sun has set we must conclude that there is more that joins us together than separates us.
Surely if we survey each other, we’ll find out that most everyone on this planet wants three basic things
Peace on Earth
Clean drinking water
Equality among its people
Everything else falls in between these.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic and quote: Stephanie DelTorchio
Make A Decision
The world is littered with the flattened dreams of people who were too afraid to make a decision.
We all have dreams, hopes, desires — things we’d like to do “someday”. Trouble is, while we stand in the middle of the road, unable or unwilling to make a decision, we risk becoming the next road kill victim.
It’s easy to miss the signs. But they are everywhere.
Sometimes they are loud, in your face; coming on like a roaring lion. You think: This is so weird. When really it’s something higher calling YOU.
Other times the signs pass by like a whisper at dusk. Still, you turn your head sideways; you notice.
Throughout our life we get these little messages and clues that nudge at us to make a decision. To start that business, learn a new language, travel to Greece…We hold on to these desires to try something, throw our hat into the ring, take a chance. Moving forward is the internal dialogue we replay over and over for years, but we freeze midway, unable to move in either direction.
When an inkling sends chills up your back don’t ignore it. The flashing neon sign is meant for you.
Whatever that thing is, it’s trying to get your attention. It needs your cooperation to make it work. Because when you wave off all the little hints, the energy associated with them eventually decides you don’t really want this, and moves on. It will seek out and find someone else, ready and willing to make a decision. Someone not wanting to become a statistic of regret.
BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!
Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio
Image: iClipArt
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