From pitch to profession what matters is your selection ⚾️💰✅
In any election, your vote can be the point of inflection 🫏🐘🔀
Your feelings are not caused by others 😊😞🧐
So treat each other like sisters and brothers 🤝❤️👫
The wave you ride will influence your introspection 🌊👁️🪞
Which, ultimately, shapes our collective direction 🧩 📈📉
⚾️Resist swinging at pitches outside your strike zone. Avoid taking the bait. Coaching high school baseball reminds me of the importance of not giving your opponent any gifts. The team that gives up the most “free 90s” (walks or unearned bases) usually loses. Be selective when you are up to bat. Know when to expend your energy, and when to conserve it.
💰When you are navigating your career, take on a hitter’s mindset. Some things are for you. Some things aren’t. Do your best to choose something that can sustain your physical and emotional needs. Unlike in baseball, in life, a walk won’t work. So, be flexible. You may have to swing at a pitch that isn’t a perfect strike. Work to happen to life, rather than let it happen to you.
✅You let your life speak. How you wake up; how you breathe; what you eat and drink; how you treat others; how you respond to the endless barrage of ‘pitches’ our world tosses you everyday are expressions of your ever-changing soul. How are you going to choose to live differently tomorrow than you did today? Let’s not pretend that we are the same people we were when we woke up today.
🫏🐘🔀Don’t like politics? Me neither. Fed up with a 2-party system? Me too. Choosing not to vote effectively functions as a vote for whichever person or party wins that election. Apathy towards your voting options, I understand. Apathy towards our future, I do not. No one is beyond the influence of another. Interdependence is not a choice, it is our condition. As Robin Wall Kimmerer claims and explains in Braiding Sweetgrass, “everybody lives downstream.”
😊Feeling happy? That is a reflection of met needs.
😞Feeling sad? That is a reflection of unmet needs.
🧐The cause of our feelings are our own needs, it is not other people’s behavior; this is the foundational premise of nonviolent communication. Communication is a combination of thinking and language. I invite you to practice nonviolent communication in order to better take care of your own needs. Interpersonal living is not easy. Joy is more abundant when we think and speak in ways that support our own needs and contribute to those of others. Suffering and violent communication are more abundant when we believe others cause our pain and are therefore deserving of punishment. Try it out - what are your feelings and needs?
🤝❤️👫We all belong to one another. There is no ‘other’. Forgive one another. Practice a spirit of love that siblings exchange despite inevitable tiffs and riffs. Though we don’t all share the same roof at night, we do all share the same night sky. Breathe in and believe in our oneness.
🌊👁️🪞When you look back on your life choices, where and how have the waves you’ve surfed carried you? Did your college major position you for an enjoyable career? How did one romantic partner influence your next? When you rode turbulent waves of anger and threatened-ego in response to situations, how did they carry you and others? When you chose to ride smoother waves of compassion and kindness in response to similar situations, how were you and others carried into our future differently? What’s your new hobby and why? Which waves will you ride next? How will you ride them differently than in your past? Self-reflect to self-direct.
🧩 📈📉What you say and do next will change your world and therefore change our world. How can our interconnection and interdependence influence our self-reflection? How can we better meet our needs without threatening the needs of others? Here in this present moment, how can we be with more purpose and peace?
