DREAM WEAVER-HOW YOUR DREAMS AND YOUR GOALS ARE INTERCONNECTED (TOOLS TO SHIFT PERSPECTIVE)

The #shiftingperspective series is an unscientific compilation of the tools, 

attitudes or approaches that have supported my journey to becoming whole-hearted, 

awake, and not controlled by my trauma.
You can read the first installment here:  Meet Your Maker 

and the second here:  Hit The Books

I bet when you think of your goals, you don't automatically
think of your dreams or desires.
In my past, these things were usually pretty disconnected.
Goals were practical things, time bound and measurable.
Dreams were fantastical, imaginary or outrageous.
As I worked to become someone new, 
I found a surprising connection between what I dream about
and the objectives I aim for when no one else is watching.
FULL DISCLOSURE: 
This is not really my idea-there are several hundred self-help gurus,
books, podcasts, youtube videos, etc that will talk to you about visualization,
about the law of attraction, affirmation, self-realization.
You will find journals or 6 month courses that walk you through 
aligning your dreams with your reality,
visual aids to help you expand your horizons.
It is not new...it is very very old.
Still...accepting that my dreams influence the direction 
of my life has been a game changer for me.
It might be one of the keys to shift your perspective too.

Look who managed to replace the flooring in her house.  #goals

Imagination is such a powerful tool and 

can be the key to unlocking something different or greater than right now.
When we dream about something, we have the potential to turn it into reality.
Dreams can be amazing launch pads to a better life, allowing us to 
create realities that seemed impossible.
Dreams can also keep us stuck if we're not careful-burning out energy on
alternate realities that would be nightmares if they came to fruition,
allowing us to escape from reality instead of working towards healing.
I have had a lot of dreams that mesmerized me into inaction or 
worse, had me feverishly spending energy in ways that could never satisfy.
The dream of being a perfect parent or wife,
the dream of reconciling with toxic people,
and the dream of arriving at the pinnacle of success (whatever that means)
were all dreams that held me in thrall for a long while.
Part of changing my perspective meant letting go of dreams that 
weren't serving me anymore.
Clearing the decks to make room for something else.

Real life view as house is getting redone. #messymiddle

Here's an example of a dream that wasn't serving me anymore:
I used to dream of traveling the world.
In my imagination, I would have a third floor flat in Florence from which to
launch myself on adventures in Europe.
Here's a typical day (in my imaginary life):
I would start the day with a cappuccino and a pastry at a little cafe around the corner,
perfectly coiffed in a striped Breton, red flats and red lipstick.
The (bright, 72 degree) day would consist of visiting markets, 
touring museums and picking up incredible stories from 
a couple of aging ex-pats who definitely
think I would be the perfect addition to their friend's dinner party that evening. 
Dinner (at their friend's refurbished castle) is a perfectly paced  
ensemble of fascinating conversation and epicurean delights-
from the pasta to the pesce, each dish highlights the special gifts of this place..
To round out the night, the whole party moves to the gardens
(which were incidentally designed by a 17th century mystic)
and our host pours wine while fireworks light up the sky.
I have a very good imagination.
It sounds like a great dream right?

But it's not a dream that I would ever want to make my real life.
The reality is...I hate to fly, I dislike to be away from my family,
and being in a different time zone leaves me stunned like a newborn deer.
I'm gluten intolerant and don't have a great relationship with alcohol.
I dislike large cities, crowds of people irritate me,
and I need to snuggle a dog and dig in the dirt to be truly satisfied.
There is zero chance I'm going anywhere with strangers I just met.
Zero.
That dream is not something that I want to have happen-
the reality of it would be awful.
I had dozens of these kinds of dreams-
the kind that might happen someday,
to someone else who was perhaps already in Italy,
who was at least able to eat bread or 
who loved to be surrounded by strangers.

I am not that person-and I never really wanted to become her.

Having that dream take up space in my imagination kept me 
from maximizing my real life.
It meant I spent my energy and time (and money) focused on 
a life that I would never want to live-instead of living a life
right now that is bigger and better and tailored to ME.

All of these are beautiful-but they're not all for me.

What if I turned that imagination towards something I really wanted?
What if I cleared out the clutter so that I could claim my own dreams
instead of spinning beautiful mirages that I secretly hope never come true?
My experience has been a little bit like a TV show for hoarders....

I've gone through and sorted dreams into keep and toss piles.

Which left space for new dreams to be imagined.
The dreams that are keepers fill my stomach with butterflies-
these dreams they will be crazy hard for me to achieve.
And yet, I feel more centered and beloved and whole
when I imagine living the life I've envisioned within these dreams.
They are not a fun movie to play across my mind when I want an escape.
They don't belong to a version of me that has to be small and they're not 
a parasitic vestige of childhood trauma lingering in a corner.
I'm willing to do the work it takes to have these dreams.
I'm willing to fail at them a hundred times.
I'm willing to say them out loud and look ridiculous.
Any effort made towards these dreams is a win-
even if I don't succeed that round, I will try again.

Here are some of my dreams:
I am a published author.
I own a mountain house.
My children love, respect and trust me.
My marriage is exceptional-I am the best friend my husband could ever have.
I have work freedom and am excited by the challenges I face.
I am thriving physically and spiritually.
I listen to GOD and do what GOD tells me to do.
I have more than enough money to support myself indefinitely.
I am open-hearted, generous and forgiving.
I love myself and am proud of the person that I am.

Every single one of these dreams are a multi-year effort-
some of them may take me all the years I have left before I can claim 
even a modicum of success.
I have failed at them and will fail again.
But to quote the great prophet CHUMBAWAMBA,
I get knocked down, but I get up again.
You are never gonna keep me down.
The intersection of goals and dreams is where the magic happens.
It is where the perspective shifts, where all the nagging
disappears into background noise.
Even though these dreams are hard,
underachieving isn't an option.
I will do it or die trying.

What are your dreams?
Are they all dreams you'd like to come true?
Is it time to clean out the closet of dreams that don't fit you anymore?
What dream is big enough for you to fail at a hundred times?
What dream is worth saying out loud and looking ridiculous for?
The dreams that are yours, the ones that are meant for you,
are worth failing at and looking dumb over.
That is the most important perspective shift of all.

GARAGE TRANSFORMED

Last post was a good old fashioned 'BEFORE' picture.

You can review it here: Insights from a Garage

I opened up all the dirty laundry that was hanging out in this 

little bitty shack behind our house.

Then I gloated a little bit about how trans-formative a change it has been.

This post is all about the 'AFTER'.

Who doesn't love a good before and after?

You've seen the mess:

BEFORE

And so you might be expecting to see a complete and utter re-do-

where everything is different.

Where the life that existed 'before' is completely over-hauled and off-set by several thousand dollars of purchases or plastic surgery or weeks of intensive exercise. 

Isn't that what a good makeover show will do?

Allow you to get rid of your life and replace it with someone else's?

AMIRIGHT?
I don't think so.

The big reveal.....AFTER!

At least...that's not what you'll see here.

We didn't buy new furniture or remake our lives with more stuff in this transformation.

We didn't become butterflies from caterpillars.

We are already enough-we don't need to be someone 
completely different or inhabit a whole new land of stuff to prove that.

There were a few trips to Lowe's Home Improvement 
but we had almost all the containers that we needed.

Sit with that for a sec...under all that pile of dysfunction

WE HAD WHAT WE NEEDED ALL ALONG.

It was already there, 
waiting to be uncovered or put into it's actual, right place.

Am I totally on drugs to think that this is such a good metaphor for living a whole life?

The last time we had a live Christmas tree was B.C. (Before Children)

The first day of the garage weekend cleanout weekend, we pulled everything out of the garage.

We split it into 3 piles:  trash, sell, and keep.

Our current yard is a tenth of an acre.  Approx. a tenth of that is grass.  

The trash pile was easy to agree on.

The pile to sell or get rid of in a different way was harder.

That required quite a bit of negotiation.

We owned a lot of stuff.

Some of it was valuable-but only valuable to someone else.

Motorcycle helmet? No longer needed.

Rock climbing gear? Haven't used in 16 years.

Cool strings of lights with hearts on them ? Still in the package.

We had to assign a value to the item and then try and sell it.

Some of it did not sell.

This stuff was heavy.

It needed to go.

There was real risk of it settling back into some new nook or cranny
 if we didn't have a plan.

We agreed on a timeline...
the stuff that didn't sell was donated to our church's youth group
 who was having a yard sale.

We have a lot of need to strap things down and hang things up.....

Now onto the stuff that we decided to keep.

We agreed that it is useful and necessary.

But....there was a lot of it.

How do we put that back in so that we can actually use it?

How can we help this space work for us 
instead of maneuvering around things constantly.

Everything has a place

This took most of the second day.

And some fiddling.

But the things we need and use most often (bikes, tools)

are handy.

The things that we only use occasionally 
(golf clubs, camping gear) 
are stored away.

No more random piles of screws, nails, bolts, hooks.  They live in this handy containers.

We grouped like with like.

So...all the tools are with similar tools 
(hammers together, screw drivers, ratchets).

Also, tools for similar projects are together-
painting supplies are in one area, 
electrical work in another.

Fuses and cables and cord-OH MY!

And labels are on many things.  
Labels to remind us where things go so we don't have to try 
and hold the pattern in our tired brains. 
Labels to remind us what we have 
and what we don't.
Labels so that we can understand the system and continue it. 

Calling a thing what it is, keeps it in it's place.

Our garage is useful now.  It's not just a thing that we have to carry around or fill up with stuff.  I keep wondering..how did I get this life that is so beautiful?  And also...how much more beautiful this life is when I prepare for the beauty.

Chairs for soccer and room for a little bit of beauty

INSIGHTS FROM A GARAGE

Can you tell what's behind this door?

Because I've been talking about a lot of emotional stuff....
I just want to pause and talk about real life.
Specifically the tactical, tangible changes that are happening in my life 
as I learn to live and breath into myself.
The innate super-powers that become enabled when I have clarity on self-care.

It's possible that I am just gloating and obnoxious about this whole subject. 
Warning....I'm going to talk about it anyway.

Turns out....getting clear on your priorities allows you to do magic.

Let me give you a for-instance.
When you are clear on your priorities,

you can actually schedule a whole weekend of time....

to clean out your garage.

I know-it doesn't sound that sexy or magical.

But it is the DIY equivalent of losing 20 pounds.

It is breathing and air.

It is taking care of myself and my life.
It is about damn time.

The before shot.  I was afraid to get too close.

We have lived in our current house for 11 years.

It's a lovely house that is exactly the right size

for 4 humans who are reasonable editors of their stuff.

There is a picture of my garage at the top of this post.
So cute right?
It is not actually big enough for one of our modern SUVs to park in

but it is big enough to store our tools, bikes, and assorted accessories.

Or at least it should be.

Some bikes we use.  Some bikes we don't.  KEEP THEM ALL was our motto.

We are not
in fact
good editors of our stuff.
We have been piling crap that doesn't work in our lives in this garage
 for a solid 10 years and 11 months.

There are so many things in this garage that are useful and needed.

Things we use daily or weekly.

Tools that are expensive and should be cared for.

Toys that are beloved and provide joy to each of us.

You just have to wade through all the crap to get to it.

No one in my house has played golf or racquetball in at least 3 years.

This garage is a useful metaphor for my life.

I have a couple of lines of thought that justify continuing to keep stuff around.
Line of thought #1 is based in a myth of scarcity, a fear of missing out or just plain anxiety.  

It goes something like this:

I might need this one day....so how about I just keep it.
Just in case.

 I definitely cannot let this item go.

It is valuable and useful.

To someone.

Possibly to me....

Although I haven't used it in years.
Maybe not ever.
It is important! 
I don't remember why....so I'll just keep it.
Just in case.

Can you see that desk chair?  Neither could we.

Line of thought #2 is based in a lack of responsibility or failure to take ownership.  
It goes something like this:

This doesn't actually work anymore but will require me to change my routine
in order to get rid of it.

It's too exhausting to get rid of it-
it's too heavy, too cumbersome, too toxic-
so I'll put it here until I feel capable or interested 
in taking care of this problem.
And....
I don't want to make time to take it to the place 
where it needs to go (i.e.-the dump) 
so I will just put it in the very back and start stacking things on it.

I'll never need to look at that broken thing again

if I can pile more useful, prettier things on top of it.
Hopefully it will disappear into the landscape of my life.

Exactly how many half used containers of cleaner do we need?

Can you see how this is JUST LIKE LIFE?
There was a long time where all aspects of my life
were the equivalent of this garage.
Outside, with the walls and masks up-
everything looks ok.
Open that door up and start looking around and
I promise you'd be shocked.
Apparently, all aspects of your life are all connected
even if you're refusing to believe it.
Having trouble with your work relationships?
You're probably experiencing those similar themes in EVERY relationship.
Hustling for your worth with a parent?
Probably hustling for your worth in every venue.
Trying to measure up?
The measuring stick is ever-present, even when you refuse to see it.


My soul work is to let the outside match the inside
EVEN IF THE INSIDE ISN'T THAT PRETTY.
Let what it is
be what it is.
Stop spending energy trying to pretend or hide.
Accept reality.
Once you accept it, you can begin to change it.

Back to the garage...

All the pictures in this post are taken on the first day of our two day garage clean out.

They are the literal piles of junk that we took out of that little tiny space.
Our tiny yard could barely hold all the stuff that was crammed into this garage.

The goal for the first day was to take it all out, 
put it in the light of day,
SEE IT.
 Mission was accomplished.

Next post will show the fruits of our labor.

Here's a little foreshadowing...we bought a label maker.

CONTAINER GARDENING TIPS AND TRICKS- Part 3

You've stepped into the third installment of my attempt to give advice 

relating to container gardening.  

When I started this series, I thought it was going to be one quick post. 

 Because...container gardens aren't that hard right?

Right?

Wrong.

Working on this post made me highly aware 

of many instances where container gardens go wrong.

Or just don't quite go right.

It's also made me more aware than usual of how easy it is to judge.

If you have a tried and true system that you love, then LOVE IT!

I'm glad you know what works for you and you're not required to change for me!

I don't always get it 'right' nor do I always care that I get it right.

There are some examples in my yard right now

of containers that are not display worthy.

I'm writing for the person who is overwhelmed,

has no idea how those containers they saw ended up so pretty,

and no idea that they could do it TOO!

After talking to several people and understanding where they went wrong

I revised my assessment for what could be helpful to non-gardeners.

There is a need for perspective and space assessment.

You can find my thoughts about that here.

Choosing the right size pot and focusing on a palette is discussed here.

Today we're going to talk about how to use the installation step (actually planting stuff!)

to your best advantage (so you can be lazy too)

And then we'll have the big reveal.

As a refresher, I'm using a recent weekend project for my church as the example.

Before picture....

There's a lot of preparation and planning that goes into a successful container garden.

At this point, I know you want to get on with the planting

but I have a couple last things to plug.

Proper drainage and soil.

It is so easy to slam some dirt into a pot and then walk away.

By mid-summer, you're wondering what the heck happened-
why that pot is not draining or why your soil is hard as a rock.

If you've invested in big pots, then you will have a really hard time excavating 

in the middle of the season to figure out what is wrong.

So...we're back to boring old prep work again for a while.

Drainage

Drainage is not a sexy word.
But in the container gardening world, it's important to understand.
Plants need watering-remember goldilocks?
Not too much, not too little...just the right amount.
That means the pot will have to hold water-but not too much.

Never use a pot that doesn't have holes in the bottom.
Pots without holes in the bottom are for decoration.
They need you to place a pot that will drain inside of them
and remove that inside pot to water.
Every time you water.

Your BIG pots should have holes in the bottom.
Sometimes they have a hole provided by 
the manufacturer but it will prove insufficient.

We drilled extra holes in the bottom of the large beige pots
used in this project so they would be sure to drain out.

It's a BIG plus if you can find one with self watering or 
extra drainage like the tall black one below.

Even when your pot has enough drainage holes at the bottom,
it's a good idea to add a layer of gravel.

I have skipped this step a few times and regretted it.
The plants go hog wild and before you know it, 
there's something clogging the holes at the bottom.  
Then they can't drain and it's a mud-pot.

Just bite the bullet, buy a $3 bag of gravel and put it in there.
Each of the beige pots have a bag of gravel in the bottom.

We used mixed river rock in the bottom because it was cheapest...any medium size gravel will do

Stage It

Before you plant....stage the pots where you want them to go.

This is especially important if you are the size of a hobbit (like me).

When you fill these pots with gravel, then dirt, then plants...
then water...you won't be able to budge them.
If you stage them beforehand, you have one last opportunity
to make adjustments before you're committed.

The Dirt

Fill with a potting mix that is made for containers.

There are lots of ways to mess this step up.

I know that there are people who want us to use soil and compost and everything
...and you can do that too...
so long as you have a degree in soil science.

Most everyone else should just buy the Miracle-Gro 
or the extra special potting mix from the big box home improvement store.
You need to fill the soil to within two inches of the top.
This project took 8 bags.
Do not skimp.
If you skimp, your plants will be fighting to be seen over the rims of the planter.
They might also be sitting in water more than they need to be.
They won't get the proper access to sunlight and it will take a while for them to start growing.
They might end up weirdly tall and leggy.

Don't over fill.
If you overfill, your water is likely to run OUT of the pot 
instead of staying inside the pot-where the roots are.

Planting

Now we get to the planting part.  This is often the most exciting part but is...
sadly, an easy place for things to go wrong again.
Some plants you're planting will be brand new babies.
These need to be handled gently when taken out of
 the plastic store bought pots.
Gently....flip the plant upside down and squeeze the bottom
 of the plants while holding your hand over the soil line.
DO NOT PULL ON THE STEMS.
Ever.
The little baby plant should fall out into your hand.
Stems between your first two fingers, soil keeping it from falling through.

Place the plants in the pot in the relative space that you want to put them.
You're trying to be gentle to these little babies.
Once you're happy with placement, then bury the roots so that the line of soil
is even with the depth of the soil in the pot..
If your soil didn't have an added fertilizer
then add some now.  
Osmocote is a slow release option or you can 
use more natural ones like blood meal and bone meal.
(yes, that is really what they are-blood and bone concentrated down)
Finally...you're almost done.
Water that pot until water runs out of the bottom.  
It needs to be thoroughly soaked.

Demo Project?

Before

After.  

Here's what our final project looked like on day one.

It will look very different in two weeks.

The tallest plants get 4-6' high so should stretch to the top of the brick.

The vines that drape over the side get 2-4' long.

I pinched the red tops off of the salvia in the auxillary pot...I may end up going back to pull them out altogether but didn't want to do that right away.

We have almost no repeats in these pots...there is one of everything EXCEPT deep purple petunias. There are repeats across the pots that tie them together (petunias, coleus, gomphrena, dahlias).

We used lots of foliage for color since it shows up better from a distance than flowers.  

Purple and lime green!  the best combo ever!

Side view

Sweet potato vine, dahlia , ornamental pepper, sage and canna lily in the back...