It’s amazing the things I know. Notice. Understand. I’m getting better at sitting with discomfort and managing my anxiety and expectations with ownership and without avoidance even when the latter feels easier. I know it is not. At least not in the long run. Choosing to face your weaknesses and uncomfortable parts of yourself only makes you stronger, but you must first learn to sit with things in silence. And then after silence comes the understanding. Then the acceptance, the ability to see a new path, a better way, and how to make a positive difference. In yourself and those around you.

Then you begin to notice. The little things. The small changes. The behavior patterns emerge. The minutiae tells a story but you can only hear it if there is silence in your head and peace in your heart.

Intonations in text messages even though they’re just words on a screen. Mannerisms in speech, body language, and in all that’s left unsaid. The silences, comfortable and un. The spaces in between. And the nothings that have been said, but haven’t needed to be spoken.

There is so much beauty in silence. Leaving you to wonder if the nothing that’s been said is even about you.

I sat up last night around a campfire looking up at a starlit sky through the trees and felt the winds change. They always do this time of year – change is coming – but on the night preceding the new moon, they danced among the leaves and some, still green with summer’s sun, drifted down from the highest treetops and floated above us down to the fire. The night told of magic in the softness of the fire crackling, the laughter of friends, the air amongst the trees, and the branches gently swaying tempting the wind chimes to sing if even just so slightly. And I thought, “how lucky am I?”

Luck doesn’t have all that much to do with it, really. Hard work, self work, playtime and downtime all do though. And I’ve had a lot of the first two, and a ton of the second, and just a touch of the last but it’s bringing things all together.

Tonight over dinner I laughed with my companion that between the two of us, we probably knew more about people than they did about themselves. We said it was lucky we were good people and didn’t use it against them, but many others would. Truth is luck has nothing to do with that, either and everything to do with who we are.

I have said this a million times – I am who I say I am – because it’s true. It was then, it is now, and it will still be true years from now because I have nothing to hide. I also don’t share other people’s business but I also won’t hide the truth if someone asks it of me and it’s a situation in which I am involved, and still then I will only speak my truth for it’s the only one I know for certain. Don’t ask me for other people’s answers. Ask them yourself. Just because they may be comfortable enough to share with me, does not give me permission to share their story with others. If it’s my story you want, look no further than to simply ask me and I’ll tell you. Even the battle scars and, even more importantly, the ones I gave to myself.

It’s my freedom. My truth. It’s also magic. Knowing and noticing are the path to finding your own magic. It can start with a belief, but you have to act on that belief and believe in yourself and take the first step otherwise you’ll never get anywhere.

Hope is a powerful thing. Hope is not a strategy.

– Tim Tebow (really!)

I heard Tim Tebow speak at the tourism conference I was at this past week and of all the things he said (he really impressed me, he’s a good guy and a great speaker with a huge heart), that quote is what stuck with me the most. It applies to everything. Business. Personal life. Goals. Sports. Everything. Hope is not a strategy. Hope is a good thing to have, and it is incredibly powerful. But without action, you will never get anywhere.

If you want something different, you have to first DO something differently, and then become something different otherwise you will just keep ending up right back where you started.

That wasn’t a Tim quote (neither was the first one). I could say it’s one of mine but really becoming something different is a variation of many things I’ve heard said before. You can’t expect anything in life to be different – relationships, family, work, or most importantly your views of yourself – if you keep doing the same thing. Saying you’ll change or saying you’ll do better or be better doesn’t matter until you actually start taking the steps to actually do the things to make it a reality. Words can cut like a knife, or build hope, but just like hope isn’t a strategy, words are not an action.

I looked up at the new moon sky tonight with nothing but stars and a few trees and, as I turned to go inside and climb into bed I saw a single, huge shooting star. It wasn’t like any regular shooting star that streaks across the sky in a brief flash and fades. No, this one was different than any I’ve seen before (and I saw more than 12 in an hour one night earlier this summer!). It was larger than most, and it sparkled with little fragments of light breaking off like a sparkler lit up in a far-away galaxy being waved across the night, and it shared its light with the sky around it. Magic.