Kerri On Down The Road

 Isn't it interesting how quickly we can lose sight of guiding principles once we open the door to overwhelm?  This past week provided a reminder of exactly this, and I feel grateful for the gift of wisdom that I received as a result. Coming into the homestretch of my current school semester, I find myself moving between feelings of elation and overwhelm, sometimes within the same day.  It feels like just as I gain some ground on my understanding of coursework, a new idea is presented and I am back on my heels again.  And then life throws a couple of curveballs, and deadlines start to approach, and suddenly my ability to feel balanced begins to slip away.  Rigidity takes over my mindset, and instead of finding ways to accommodate these competing pulls on my attention, I start to shut down.  Worry about how I will accomplish everything that is coming my way builds up until I somehow manage to check some boxes off my to-do list, and things simmer down again....

 I can't pinpoint the exact moment it happened or what specifically led to it taking place.  All I do know is that sometime in middle school, I went from being someone who felt confident raising her hand in class to ask and answer questions, to someone who would sit on her hands and do the complete opposite.  Even if I knew the answer, or needed to know something to clear up confusion I had about a topic we were learning, I much preferred to stay silent and under the radar, and away from teasing about being a "teacher's pet" or potential ridicule for what I didn't know or answered incorrectly.   This mindset of needing to take up less space and figure things out on my own is something that I have carried with me since then.  Never wanting to overstep imaginary boundaries I placed on myself regarding the amount of space I should take up, or admitting to needing help.  Instead, I stayed quiet, small, and determined to make my own way forward.  The g...

I'm not sure about you, but when I see an orange "detour" sign on the road ahead, I feel a tremor of panic run through my body.  Usually, this sensation is accompanied by many questions - "How far out of my way is this going to take me?" "How long will this detour last?" "Why today of all days does this need to happen?" and so on, and so forth.   Despite all of my worry and wondering, these new routes are usually not so bad.  They aren't terribly inconvenient, and before I know it, I am back on my original route, just as planned.  What these side trips do offer, aside from getting caught in construction chaos, is a chance to be reminded of the importance of non-attachment.  My concerns around detours are a direct reflection of the difficulty I have in altering plans I have made.  There, I said it.  I love planning out next steps and the steps after those are complete.  I love thinking that I have even a half-assed idea of where I'm go...

 It was Sunday night, nearing dinnertime, when I looked at the clock and realized with a start that I had not written this week's blog yet.  It is unusual for me to have nothing in the hopper by this point in the week, and mild panic began to set in.  What if this is the week when I have nothing to write?  What if this is the start of the end for my blog?  What would it mean if I missed a week?   Usually, I have a thought or a spark of an idea that lands with me sometime during the week, and over time, it morphs into the posts I put on my site each Monday.  Often, these are quite organic in nature and are born from conversations and experiences that I have had in the days prior.  Not this week.  As I took a moment to reflect on ideas and thoughts I could craft into a post, the silence was deafening.  Crickets.  Tumbleweeds.  Ticking clock sounds. I started to do what felt natural, I tried to force ideas forward, thinking a...

 There was a time when I took great pride in achieving accomplishments on my own.  Grinding through obstacles, head down, never considering asking for help.  This was not all that long ago.  For some reason, anything I achieved in this manner was more meaningful than it would have been if I had reached out and accepted support from those around me. Being introduced to the African proverb, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together," set me on the path of changing my very limited way of thinking. Last week, I had numerous opportunities to experience the power of community and the transformative nature of being surrounded and supported by others.   Last week marked the CAMH Sunrise challenge, a fundraiser where participants are encouraged to wake up early enough to see the sunrise while raising funds for mental health initiatives.  This meant dips that began much earlier than our usual timing, and although we tend to be early r...

 Relish is a term that I find difficult to define with words. When I think about relishing something, feelings come to mind instead: slowly savouring the last morsel of a decadent dessert, sipping the last mouthful of a perfect cup of coffee, or the pause and acknowledgement between friends of quality time spent together.  What strikes me about these examples is how they all seem to occur at the end of something special, leaving me to wonder what would happen if we could relish tender moments while IN the moment.  I pondered this as I returned home from a relaxed morning dip on the weekend.  Stepping out of my car, I noticed the bird song filling the air, and a daring thought crossed my mind.  What would happen if, instead of busying myself with putting away my dipping gear and moving into the next parts of my day, I took what was left of my post-dip coffee and sat on the front porch for a few moments to relish the start of the day?  There was only one way ...

 I recently listened to a podcast featuring a sports psychologist discussing elite athletic performance. While I do not count myself as a member of that club, I do believe that there are many lessons to be learned about the tools we all possess that can help us become our best selves.   What I found most interesting was the concept of focusing on precision over perfection.  The idea that even for those who perform at the highest levels of achievement, there will NEVER be a perfect execution or perfect performance.  NEVER.  Instead, there can and will be moments of precision, when things are firing at the right times, there is a sense of flow state being engaged, and what has often felt difficult becomes less so.  Not to say that the effort behind it is low or the outcome is mediocre.  The opposite is true.   When we shift our thinking away from focusing on perfection, we allow ourselves some room to move, and our innate knowing of what n...