Dear friend,
Before I start with the free flowing rambling, I want you to know I am incredibly grateful you have given me a few moments of your life to consider my words and thoughts. I don't take it lightly and wrestle with every word I send you, so it has the chance of being a seed of joy and challenge for your soul.
This has been an interesting week. I got to go to Boca Raton and work with a country club there. It's wild how some people are doing life. My computer didn't work when I got to the event. The night before I got everything ready and right before I left, it locked up and wouldn't let me in. It was a frazzled scene. Thankfully, I had an iPad with a copy of my presentation.
No one in the audience knew all the zaniness we went through to get it going. When I returned home, the next morning I immediately went to the Apple store. They discovered my Option Key was sticking which made my keyboard useless. Thankfully we were able to bypass it with an external one, find the problem and create a temporary fix. I'm backing up my laptop as I write this on my desktop in the office.
One key was stuck in the depressed mode and it rendered everything else useless. Would you like me to write that again? The entirety of the computers use and value was completely hijacked by one little stuck key. When I typed any regular letters, they appeared as symbols. I typed a "g" and an "@" appeared. What the heck?! Have you seen that to be true in your life? One stuck area alters the reality of every other area.
STUCK
Once we got past the lock screen, the genius bar guy pulled up a virtual keyboard on the screen where we could see the key was in permanent press mode. It wasn't digital, it was mechanical. On a Macbook pro, you can't replace a singular key, you have to replace the whole keyboard. Turns out that's a $700 expense. How cool would it be if we could access our stuckness so clearly and quickly, with the insight into how it's directly impacting every other aspect of our life. Granted the solution might be expensive.
I love forward motion. I love movement itself. I hate being stuck. The inability to extract ourselves mentally, physically or emotionally from a situation is contrary to my foundational beliefs and philosophy. Yet it happens to all of us. How long we remain there is mostly our choice. I have discovered however that sometimes what has kept me stationary is my own integrity. Which forces me to find another way to consider myself in the situation.
MINDSHIFT
What if this week you pondered an area of stuckness in your life and determined whether you could do something entirely different OR think something entirely different?
SHORT CUT
I would rather be stuck, then take a short cut. I would rather remain on the High Road, then dip through a back alley low road. I've taken both in the past and what I realized was the short cut created a much worse scenario than the one I thought I was stuck in. It's a crazy assertion to say being stuck is almost entirely in our mind... but it is.
The word itself sounds harsh. Heck, it rhymes with a word that people use to express their frustration when they find themselves in such a place. When you and I feel restricted and incapable of altering the world around us or in us, it's exasperating. Be careful.
When we see people violate basic human principles that we were taught in elementary school, it's not because they are bad people, it's because in their attempt to get unstuck they justify such actions. Let's not do that.
MINDSHIFT
What if this week you disabled every thought that enabled you to excuse behaviors in your attempt to be unstuck?
GOODNESS
I'm determined to find in every stuckness the opportunity to become what I'm currently not. What if these limiters that seem to restrict, are an invitation to a new freedom? The essence of stuckness is that it prohibits us from where we want to go. What if it is actually the doorway? What if this place - physically, mentally or emotionally - that seems to have a hold on us, is really just holding us in place long enough to pay attention.
We are capable of owning 100% of our stuckness. By doing so, we convert it to 100% goodness.
I'm accessing my laptop via a bluetooth keyboard. At the moment, the key is no longer stuck. But I don't trust it anymore. Who knows, it may lead to an entirely new computer, which wasn't budgeted for, but could enhance my work and life in new ways. Don't get caught in What the Stuck - get free in Don't Pass the Buck.
SHIFTING
I hope this week you continue to build your home, neighborhood and community on the high road. Check your frustration and notice what else is being negatively impacted by your stuckness. Look once more at the opportunity you are being provided by getting to stay a little longer. #ShiftAway
