Embrace

I find that the only way I can change anything in my life is to first embrace it.  I have to think about, examine it, poke it with a stick a few times, and accept that it exists.  Until I embrace my situation and fully feel and understand it, I can't really start to change it.  It doesn't matter if the thing I want  to change is big like weight loss or starting a new chapter in life or something small and mundane like cleaning my desk. I have to do the survey first.

By embracing what is, we give ourselves permission, emotionally, physically, and mentally to deal with the whole situation, not just part of it. We get an opportunity to understand how things, ideas, situations, and people influence our behavior,

Take my desk for instance,  It's in my bedroom, and because I can't close the doors on it currently, the light from the monitor is keeping me up at night. It's messy, and has been for a while. There are papers, a fossil, a candle, some cords, a hammer, a pair of glasses, and some hair accessories mixed in among the pens and keyboard and office supplies.  Looking a the papers gives me a sense of when my desk started to have an issue. I was busy and just tossed the stack down on the desk, intending to deal with it later. That was three weeks ago.  The hair accessories tend to accumulate because I pull them out of my hair when I'm stressed and then put them back in my hair when it gets messy.  The cords are leftover from my husband trying to backup the data on my phone before it died for good, and most of the rest of the stuff is from taking things away from kids, picking stuff up off the floor, or rearranging the rest of the furniture in the room.

I can learn from this mess. I need to start putting things away rather than procrastinating.  That is something I've been working on for years, and while I am improving, I slip up when I get stressed or too busy.  Taking a deep breath, taking care of one task at time, and setting some boundaries for what gets tossed here will help me. I also need to make an effort to make sure the desk can be closed at night. Sleep is important to my health and sanity.  I also need to not start projects that I can't finish in a timely period when I know I don't have time for them. Now that I have embraced my mess, examined it, come to understand it, I can deal with it and the circumstances that led to it.

Embrace your situation, yourself, and your life. Whatever situation you find yourself in, big or small, if you can understand it, you can change it. Give yourself permission to really look at it for what it is, and ask yourself how you got there, why you stay, and start looking for ways to change whatever isn't working for you or is impeding your happiness.  Embracing doesn't require you to hold onto things forever, it just asks that you do it for long enough to understand, to connect, and to process the situations and circumstances you find yourself in. Once you've done that, you can move on to some other aspect of changing your life.

Introduction

Join us on our amazing journey which is made for everyone!  Why come along on this adventure?  We're just like you!  We have everyday trials and tribulations.  We've learned that if you embrace and celebrate life's hiccups and triumphs they are much easier to learn from.  Sharing our experiences connects us and helps inspire ourselves and others in all aspects of life.  This change is contagious!

A little about us & our tri-decade connection: Mandy & I met through our mothers who later became best friends.  I can't recall the initial meeting but I do recall babysitting Mandy and her two younger brothers when I was 11.  As our Mothers became closer friends our family got bigger. We were both the oldest female children in the group so of course we became friends.  Almost two decades later, Mandy's Mother married my Uncle, my Mom's brother.  This union made us cousins and more interconnected than before!  Mandy & I are rather different but we compliment each other, this allowed us to be brutally honest without hurt feelings (which in turn became self realization) that both of our lives, for different reasons, at different speeds, had deviated from the life journeys previously envisioned.  Neither one of us was entirely happy about this.  We had to make a change(s) in the direction our lives were going and in that process Exist Connected was created.  Embracing the idea that we were desperately in need of change and if we didn't help ourselves, then how could we expect anyone else too!  By changing what we could and embracing our strengths and the experiences around us, people started to take notice.  We were unknowingly inspiring others.  It was the ripple effect, we were the start.

Honing in on areas of our lives that needed to be changed we kept having the same conversation over and over again in different forms for years.  Change, Embrace, Connect, Inspire, Laugh, Learn and Celebrate kept resonating throughout.  As we started to tell others about what we had learned from our realizations; it became obvious we weren't the only ones striving for change.    

Change what doesn't work both inside and out
Embrace what is, who you are and possibility
Connect with others who are on their journey, yourself and nature
Inspire yourself and others and be open to being inspired
Laugh at life and yourself 
Learn new things, new ideas without prejudice 
Celebrate yourself, others and this journey that is life

Exist Connected will contain insights for making the journey more enjoyable for everyone.  We will be sharing ideas on everyday lifestyle tips,  places, occupations, crafts and who knows what else, we're open to inspiration?!  We are not alone on our journeys we are all connected in more ways than we realize and how we feel connected to one another varies dramatically! 

We want to make this your journey too.  Please let us know how you "connect" with the world around you and in the event you might be reluctant to try something new to connect please send us your ideas!  We'll be embracing them all!

~Heather & Mandy