A Million Small Steps

Work has always been a means to an end and not my identity. I watched others struggle with the ego of professional identity and never wanted any part of that. A career that will financially support you will take up a large portion of your life and now that I am letting that portion of life go, I am relearning to balance my life. Part of the balancing is to let go of the need for commerce and entertainment as a form of stress relief. Most of this stress relief came from my phone but now I do not need it. I am discovering that I never needed it all along. The commerce stress relief came during the pandemic lockdown as a way to reassure me that I could get what I needed while not going outside. I found that the goods available during and post-lockdown are poorly made and slickly marketed. They provided a diminishing return on both the monetary side and the stress relief side, so I picked up an old habit of “shopping in my own closet”. I found the clothing and goods I currently had were far better quality than anything I was getting from shopping online. I hoped that things would get better post-pandemic, but as of 2023, they have not. It appears that well-made, high-quality clothing is a thing of the past. It also appears that my old top loader washing machine which is made with all metal parts is a gem that is worth keeping in good repair. Thrift stores are full of high-quality items such as clothing, lamps, wood furniture, dishes, and even appliances that will last another lifetime.

For entertainment, there are still all the cute animal videos known to man out there, but I have cute animals at my feet that need a walk, pets, and kind words. All this adds up to a putting down of my phone and it is weird when everyone else is distracted by their own journey into the artificial and addictive world of the phone. I see people crossing the street while looking at their phones. Moms with babies in strollers are looking at their phones while crossing an 8-lane boulevard and this just breaks my heart. Most of the advice out there for new moms is commercially or politically oriented and is backed by suspect science. I am grateful for my mom who does not know how to use a phone. I am also grateful that I had all four of my grandparents until I was almost 40. Because of them, I have the old-world ways of how to live firmly in my brain and I have passed those on to my own offspring who have learned how to live small, attend the Good Enough University, and are studying the ways of satisfaction rather than perfectionism.

On the precipice of retirement from one role to be replaced with a much better role of grandmother, I am looking into the future with a relaxed curiosity. I have the luxury of experience to lean back on while I look over the potentiality of the future. I have learned a lot about myself and life over the years and the best thing I have learned is that everyone’s life has a story that will make you cry or a story that will make you laugh. The version you focus on will determine how you get through life. When I was a kid, traveling in the backseat of a 1967 GTO, I used to pass the time on highway trips counting blue cars. Once I focused on blue cars, it seemed like they were everywhere. The same is true for your own story. Focus on the version that makes you laugh and that will show you the awesomeness of your higher self.

It has been a year since my last post and looking back, it has been a year of blessings. Steve and I got married, I started a new job, the family is all doing well. This Thanksgiving, I overate two days in a row and ended up in the ER with a gallbladder attack. Now, looking back, I can see that this past year, I have been steadily declining in how much energy I had, my weight was increasing, and even though I was exercising pretty regularly, I was eating a high fat diet. Most meals were small, but when I did eat a big one, I had to lie down with a heating pad. I was in denial. I should have had the gallbladder out in the hospital that night I went to the ER, but thankfully, the doc was a dope and sent me home to suffer. The consequence of that decision has changed my outlook on the holidays and my diet completely. The first week I ate no solid food until I could see the surgeon. On the fifth night of liquids, I was up in the middle of the night after letting my dog out, and so hungry. I decided to try one of the grape juice popsicles I just bought the day before and when that lovely thing hit my tongue it was like a frozen holy first communion. The sugar hit my system and lifted me to heaven while I literally cried tears of gratitude for this journey. I could see that my senses had adjusted from a heightened sense of physical to an increased sense of the spiritual. I was taken back in time to when I was 12 and received my first holy communion and baptism. I could see my pastor’s young face, his dark eyes and hair and the glow that seemed to surround him. In my vision, I could see my brother, young and innocent-ish, my young and handsome father sitting with my beautiful mother. It was springtime, a little warm and I had been so excited about becoming an official member of the church, that I had not eaten since mid-day the day before. When that grape juice hit my body then, it was a burst of pure energy that was just like what I was feeling now. That feeling of being cared for by all the people who loved me flooded my eyes with big salty tears of gratitude. I still felt all of them loving me from the beyond and I was grateful for my mother still here for me to talk with every day. I realized that this was an opportunity to take a fork in the road for a real change in my diet. I learned to cook without fat and the food was seriously tasty to my surprise. I’ll be posting some recipes soon.

The surgeon recommended a very low fat diet, small meals with lots of vegetables (no olive oil), chicken breast or fish with few carbs. No butter, cheese, ice cream, Christmas cookies, candy, yikes! I was scared to eat solid food but once I did, it was so sustaining and nutritious that it felt heavenly. I would have to go through the holidays with this new diet and it was requiring me to focus on the real reason for the season. I also had to go through a course of antibiotics and rest, so everything seemed to slow down. I had to only do what was important and leave the “extra” stuff out so my priorities immediately adjusted. So did my skin, my hair, my digestive system, my lymph system and the inflammation just started to go away everywhere. My face, my upper body and back, my lower legs, almost immediately let go of a bunch of girth. My stomach is less bloated, but not fully back to normal. What a message from the universe! Let go of fatty meals, high sugar things, and eat like a girl, not a football player. LOL ❤

There are so many things to be thankful for this fall. The beauty of nature always inspires me to be grateful. I can see the grace given to me in every step I take on the crunchy leaves in our yard. As my neuroscientist friend Paul says, “Every step we take is actually a controlled fall” and I believe there is heavenly grace in that statement. Grace appears to me in the fact that I have always gotten up from every fall I experienced in life. Many of these falls were part of my path to learn about my own self and the gifts that I was given to walk down my life path. These gifts are shiny and wonderful with the right perspective. Surviving failed relationships that would have devastated me without grace is evidence of this type of gift. After enough time has passed and perspective gained, I can see these events as gifts. Surviving jobs that are no longer productive for me, co-workers that belittle and take advantage of me, to find the perfect job in the middle of a pandemic is another type of gift. I am grateful for the good and the not so good because with enough time, I see the plan unfolding. What I know to be true:

1. Live totally in the moment and you will see dazzling beauty that no one could ever take away from your memory.
2. Accept what comes your way and learn without belittling yourself, then you will have great wisdom.
3. Grace is everywhere, like the manna that God provided his people wandering in the Sinai. Eat it up and be grateful because it will nourish your body and soul.

Here is a good recipe for the fall bounty!

Baked Acorn Squash

Set oven to 325

Place whole acorn and buttercup or butternut squash on a baking sheet and bake in 325 oven for 30-45 minutes or until just barely tender when poked with a knife. You will cook it again when you are ready to eat so it is OK for the squash to be a little stiff, just not hard.

Cool, cut in half, scoop out seeds with a spoon, cover and store in the refrigerator up to three days until ready to eat.

When you are ready to eat, cover the squash with Franks hot sauce (or whatever hot sauce you like) and bake 325 for about 20 minutes until warm and a little more tender.

Scoop out the buttercup squash and place in the acorn squash, add more hot sauce to taste and enjoy!

Summer is a wonderful time to put your toes in the sand (or dirt) and connect with nature. Fishing, gardening and enjoying the backyard have helped me to put COVID-19 quarantine into perspective. I did get the quarantine 15 (almost) pounds on my body from stress. During this time, I learned to be patient with myself and identify my triggers for stress eating. Alongside my talented and intuitive daughter, I am exploring the triad of fitness in new and graceful ways. The triad is mind, body, and spirit fitness applied to my unique life in a way that I can own it even when no one is there to encourage me.

My inner voice is sometimes brutal and destructive, so I must learn to be kind to myself and listen to my higher self during times of stress.

The process of moving from my destructive inner voice to my beautiful higher self requires some fearless investigation of what is going on in my own head and bringing a light into that darkness. The light comes from my higher self, that kind and gentle voice that always tells me the truth, even when I don’t believe it.

My wise and gentle higher self can put the tiger at ease and utilize her strength to create wonder and beauty around me.

The summer has been filled with gardens, beaches, fishing and beauty. Each event has a yin/yang to it, with the inner voice and the higher self negotiating for light and grace. The new job is amazing with my office in my dad’s old office over the garage. I work at the desk he bought when he was in college. My dogs inspire me to relax and be playful at work. My mom reminds me of what is really important (family). Fishing and gardening provide a beautiful way to get fresh air and exercise while eating the fish is just amazing.

All this sounds perfect right? Well, during COVID quarantine, I was in a knife fight with my inner voice to find peace and balance. During this time, I had to ask for help from God and my daughter. Both have delivered me to my higher self for a much more balanced view of the world. I turned off the TV, social media, and limited my phone usage. Instead I turned on music, writing, photography, talking about the beauty of life with Steve, and slowly but surely, I am in a much more peaceful state.

It is in the air, opportunity to grow, expand my viewpoint, and learn. Mental fitness complements my physical and spiritual fitness by opening the doors to curiosity. I first have to read about a topic before I try it out. This month, I am working on organizational dynamics and considering how they apply to my field of instructional design.

Books come to me through my smart colleagues who recommend them, and through my smart phone that is tracking everything I am investigating. For now, I believe there is a semi-benign cookie monster gathering all my search data and curating things of interest, and encouraging me to purchase them. For now, that cookie monster is my friend, but I am keeping an eye on him for sure. I read, think about and carefully consider the jewels that come out of reading.

Jewels are the bright flashes of truth that stick with you when you are learning; they are the aha moments of learning. In my adulthood, before graduate school, I discovered the gold nugget moment in professional development events. I was giving a workshop on tracking student performance with an electronic gradebook (this was way back in the 90’s) and participants would tell me about the one thing they learned that they didn’t know before the workshop. These development events were mandatory and most teachers dreaded them, but at the end when we did the wrap up, they all noticed something new that they learned.

I started using that approach to my own learning when I had to sit through my own mandatory training. It was almost like a game, to find the thing I didn’t know. What I know now, was that I was tightly knitting previous knowledge to new knowledge with an internal generative learning activity that worked for me. I would evaluate each thing that I was presented, search through my previous knowledge to see how much of the presented information I really did not know. It forced me to pay attention instead of tuning out. It made the time fly and it made me a little smarter. Now, I have this golden treasure trove of jewels and nuggets that every teacher I had, good and not so good, gave to me.

Here is my wisdom for the day related to mental fitness: Mindfulness in meetings will always yield a nugget for me. In these days of endless online meetings, I take notes even though part of me believes I have heard all this before. Even so, there is always one little nugget I can take away from the experience. Sometimes, I feel like I am panning for gold to get a tiny little flake in my sifter, but gold flakes are often indicators that bigger pieces are nearby. As soon as I find a nugget, I am eager to share it with others.

For me, knowledge is not a zero sum game, it is always a win/win proposition. If you are smarter and stronger, then your life will be better. If your life is better, those around you may benefit. If someone in an organization uses knowledge in a negative way, I will spend a little more time than others holding the light in hopes that either I see the good in what that person is doing, or that person sees the potential for higher productivity in the good. I believe I am given infinite grace by my creator and I work to extend that grace as best I can in my limited human capacity. It is a good thing that I have this infinite grace because I am far, far from perfect and every time I try my best, it still needs a little cushion of grace to round it out. I am grateful for the opportunities around me to learn and grow.

 All my life, I have heard the voice of my higher self trying to get me to see and understand the beauty that is in the world.  I come from a mother who is an artist and a father who was an engineer.  At times, my higher self is moved to tears by the beauty of light hitting an object just the right way (that’s the influence of the artist) and then I look for the science behind this reaction (that is the engineer in me).  My higher self is the part of me that is standing right next to the source of all life (for me that’s God). 

Emily Esfahani Smith wrote this fabulous book about the pillars of meaning and on her website she has a quiz that I took. I like the evidence of a quiz, so I took it.  Turns out that my reaction to beauty is seeking transcendence. 

http://emilyesfahanismith.com/quiz/whats-your-pillar

As a photographer and an educator, I used some technology to make a digital story about the pillars of meaning:

Then, a friend turned me on to this survey to identify character strengths
VIA Survery
https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register

Where is beauty?
Sometimes I would get distracted by every day mess in life and not be able to see the beauty.  When this happens I feel disconnected from my higher self and ultimately from God.  Look at this mess!!!

Tune out the noise and here is the beauty.

Yep, my shower needs to be cleaned, but look at the light pattern…I am so grateful for clean hot water to take a shower.

Ready to start the day’s work in polka dots and stars.  Life is pretty good. 

Starting the journey to fitness on the Appalachian Trail in June. I took a weekend to connect with my daughter, a Ph.D. student in rehabilitation at Old Dominion University, to do some unwinding and hiking in the mountains. I had to practice a lot of self-love and awareness to get to this point. The hike was 4.5 miles and I was able to complete 3.5 miles of it before my ankle and the rest of my body ran out of gas. Still, I did complete about 7000 steps. I will honor this 56 year old body with gentle order and loveliness as much as possible. Lately, I have added two days of one hour circuit training and one hour of yoga each week to my exercise routine at COVA church in Virginia Beach. If you follow the link below, you will see my lovely, brave, and brilliant daughter on the left. I have the exercise thing figured out thanks to her and now she is working on the diet thing with me. If I do the diet change (forever) and the exercise thing at the SAME TIME, nothing can stop me. A million small steps though…one at a time. Check out the link to see if you would like to join the various age and ability groups in a positive environment that makes me like exercise again!

COVA Wellness Center Virginia Beach Facebook Page

Thank you for being here. I’ve lived quite a while on this earth and believe I can share some of the lessons learned along the way. Anything worth having is achieved with a million small steps – Dr. Julie Bridges (that’s me, LOL). I am not perfect, but I am perfectly me and I want to share my journey to self acceptance and fitness as I go along this path. If you have been struggling with fitness, you are already an expert. You already know all the exercises and recipes you need to know. What you might not know is how to listen to what I call your higher self. It is the wisdom of that still small voice I call God, or some see in nature, or some see in our infinite connection to each other. Regardless of your beliefs, you suffer when you ignore the magic of that voice. This blog is a guidebook to ending the suffering in a million small steps. Put your foot on the path and see what happens.

 “At a distance you only see my light… Come closer and Know that I am You” Rumi