Yesterday was my birthday, and I feel incredibly grateful to be living a life that is so meaningful and expansive. I sat down to think about the elements that are leading to that outcome, and want to share with you what has been pivotal for me in dramatically increasing my sense of well-being!

It’s not because my life is problem-free; I have annoying things to deal with but I just prefer not to focus on them.

Here’s the question I ask myself: What do I want my life to look and feel like?

Asked another way: if you had all the resources available to live your dream life, what would you do?

These kind of questions are part of the ongoing vision work that I do, and my answers always help me better direct my energies toward what I really want.

When I thought about the components that make me happy, I realized I can integrate them in small ways every day, and that makes a huge difference. I don’t have to wait for the ‘one day when..then’ to happen.

Here are some personal examples of things that are important to me. My schedule means I’m at home with my children most of the time, and I don’t have large blocks of the self-time that I had associated with some of these things:

• An unhurried and serene schedule
• Time in the outdoors
• Time for prayer and meditation
• Physical movement

When I thought about having these things, I would think, ‘One day.’ I had an ideal vision of what that would look like and I assumed I’d have to wait until my children were much older.

I imagined long, uninterrupted blocks of time until I realized, if I wait to have huge blocks of time for perfect, I’m never going to have the things that I want! Instead, I’m going to spend way too much time being frustrated and longing for something that I don’t have.

So here’s my solution: do today – in a small way – the things that you care about most.

There are a number of very small choices I’ve made over time; here’s some of what that looks like on a daily basis. See if you can spot the elements that make my day feel amazing!

I wake up between 5 – 6  so that I have quiet time before anyone else is up. Sometimes my kids start waking up by 5:15, but I sometimes have until as late as 6:30 when the house is quiet. (Right now it’s 6:11 and Yirmi is awake and snuggling next to me on the porch swing as I write this.)

During part of that time, I sit outside on my porch and enjoy listening to the birds chirping. I feel the quietness of the early morning. I try to take time for some prayer at this point, and get in what I can. My ideal is about 30 minutes, but sometimes it’s just 5 minutes and that’s fine, too.

I then have plenty of time to get Yirmi and Rafael ready for school without rushing and tension.

Rafael (2 3/4) just started preschool last week (after being home for 3 months – yay for bureaucratic inefficiency!!) , and now part of my new schedule has prompted more opportunities for doing things I love!

After Yirmi goes on his van to school, Rafael and I immediately walk to the bus stop. He qualifies for a school van but I love having this time with him in the morning. Instead of rushing to get him ready for an early morning van and him having several transitions between leaving the house and being in school, we’re able to spend that time together.

I’ve chosen to take him by bus rather than drive so that we have the chance to walk together. In addition to the together time, walking is important to build his stamina as well as for overall general health and well-being. It’s so nice to start the day with something that is high on my list of priorities.

After I drop him off, I walk home. It’s so nice to be outside and moving in the morning!

I’ve begun stopping at a local park that has a large grassy area. My kids at home don’t yet expect me to be back, and thirty minutes sitting or laying on the grass, watching the trees sway in the breeze while listening to a meditation or inspiring talk is incredibly expansive for me.

By this time it’s 9:30 and I’m feeling like I have the most amazing life on the planet! Pure bliss.

But it’s just a regular morning doing the same kind of things as all the parents around me.Don’t think my mornings are absent any challenges! The extreme feelings of well-being come from doing the little things that align with what I want my life to look like.

The exciting thing is that anyone can do the same things! You may not be able to go for a week long vacation to Europe or live next to a nature reserve, but you can find small ways to integrate the elements you want most into your life.

Ask yourself what you want your life to look like, make a small shift in your daily schedule or behavior, then keep asking yourself the same question and keep making little, little changes over time. The more I do this, the more awesome life feels! And the best part is, it’s not dependent on anything outside of you to change.

Try it and let me know in a week how it feels!

Avivah

The motivation for me to move somewhere else is in large part about being closer to nature, and therefore the physical location of a home is important to me. Once I realized that even in much less expensive areas that the land costs are beyond my budget, I started to envision a different way to have the visual benefit of lots of land.

I imagined finding the last house on the block with an agricultural field next to it. That way I can have the feeling of lots of land and space without having to buy it all!

I went cruising online, looking at properties for sale in that area (for research purposes only since we aren’t ready to buy something), and one particular home resonated with me. Of course, I didn’t know anything about the location, who the neighbors are, what the condition of the house is – in short, I didn’t know any of the important information that would be critical in making a decision when buying a home.

But nonetheless, it was nice to see that what I was imagining was possible, so I pulled up this picture on my screen to show my husband, saying, “This is it. This is the vision.”

I didn’t mean we should buy this; I just wanted him to share the visual.

It was the last house on the block; on one side it was bordered by a grove of palm trees; the front of the house looked onto an agricultural field. To the left of the home that shares a common wall were more agricultural fields, and opposite the house there was a beautiful view of the mountains.

The listing had almost no pictures of the inside of the home, leading me to think suspiciously about the condition of the home. But no matter, because I wasn’t ready to look at it anyway. I didn’t even make a call to the agent listed to ask the briefest of questions. Even when I later visited the area to look at houses with a different agent, I didn’t call about this house.

Literally less than two minutes into our drive with the agent we met, I recognized the above house as we drove by. I asked him about it; after checking it out, he told us it was an exclusive listing with a different agent so he couldn’t show it to us.

We finished looking at homes and then drove to visit the first family we had scheduled to drop in at.

And where do you suppose they live?

Right behind this house.

It was starting to feel like I was being pulled to this house, despite my resistance to do anything more than look at a picture on the computer screen.

I considered contacting the agent, but procrastinated about it. Because we’re not ready to buy a house. And I don’t want to waste people’s time. But most of all, because I was afraid it would be the right house for us and I couldn’t see how we could buy it.

I procrastinated for two weeks, until a day before visiting the area again I finally asked the agent to see it.

This time our eighteen year old daughter was with us, and she didn’t think much of the house. I completely understand her; many people have a hard time seeing beyond clutter/mess and someone else’s style. But I’m really good at seeing the potential beyond the distractions.

What I saw was a convenient location, good neighbors (we introduced ourselves to the family immediately next door after looking at the house), and a suitably sized house and yard. And of course very important to me – the expanse of land close by.

Oh – at a price we could comfortably afford.

Darn. Darn. Darn.

This strongly matched what I wanted but didn’t match my timeline. And that wasn’t completely exciting – it was honestly kind of stressful.

So now there was a dilemma. Should we wait a few months until our home sold and make an offer if this was still on the market? But it wasn’t likely to still be on the market. From briefly viewing other homes, we realized the combination of features we were looking for wasn’t a common scenario.

What to do? I was so conflicted. This seemed so right for us. But, hello, money?!?

We brainstormed, we talked, we made some calls about alternative financing.

After all of this we told the agent we were interested and needed to have an inspection done. It took two weeks for the inspection to be completed, and we finally put in our purchase offer.

At this point I was sure this would be the home we would buy and the only question is what the final price would be.

So I thought. This brings to mind the saying, ‘Man plans and G-d laughs.’

Two days later, the agent got back to us. We were ready for a counteroffer, but we weren’t ready for what we were told.

The seller changed his mind about selling and was taking his home off the market.

I was completely thrown off. I was deeply disappointed. I couldn’t believe it.

I mean, this house was my vision. It seemed so perfect for us, everything had seemed to flow so smoothly toward that point. I hadn’t even looked for it – it had found me. It really felt like a huge magnet had pulled us to this house because this is the house we were meant to have.

And then, it wasn’t.

*********************

The first act of courage is to have a vision that is bigger that what you currently have.

The next act of courage is to hold on to that vision even when it seems to be crumbling in front of you.

The most natural thing in the world is when you reach out for something and your hand gets sharply slapped down, is to stop reaching. Instead, you make your vision smaller and safer, and you tell yourself all the reasons you didn’t really want what you were reaching for anyway.

This has been my next growth opportunity. To continue to move toward my overall vision, and to release my attachment to the specifics of how the vision comes about. I can’t say how major this is and how challenging this is. I trust that somehow my vision is going to come together, but how, when, where, what – I don’t know any of that.

On an almost daily basis I have been asking G-d to give me clarity about the next right step, and whether it was what I wanted or not, the seller’s response gave me the clarity I asked for.

The answer is either: 1) not this house right now, or 2) there is a better home for us.

This is the thought I’m going with – either this home will come back to us at a more opportune time, or there is a more suitable home for us.

This emotional dance is like walking a tightrope – to believe that you’re going to have something you want in your life but not feel upset when you don’t get it. To trust something will happen and let go of your specific idea of what that will look like (in this case releasing attachment to this specific house). To be connected but not overly invested.

A few years ago I couldn’t even understand this concept in an abstract way. I would ponder this idea, wondering how in the world is that possible?

Either you want something, take actions toward it and you care about the outcome, or you don’t care about the outcome and don’t move toward it. How can you move toward something and release the end result emotionally?

It’s interesting, learning to surf the waves of life.

Avivah

(Continued from Step 2 towards your best life…)

After my talk with my husband and verbally wrestling repeatedly with my resistance to changing anything about where we currently live, my husband asked if I knew of a place that I would want to live. Did it even exist?

Almost none of the smaller communities that are in more natural settings are religiously aligned with our direction, and shifting my religious affiliation isn’t an option.

I then thought of a community in the north where I spoke several years ago. At that time, I had the passing thought that it seemed like a nice place to live.

I mentioned this area to my husband. We agreed to look into it, then each made calls to people living there to begin getting information.

After a couple of weeks we had gotten as much information from a distance that we were going to get, and what we then needed to do was get a first hand feel for the area.

We decided to make a day trip there, to meet a couple of families. I also wanted to see what kind of housing was available and to verify that a home that I would be comfortable with would be financially feasible for us. (I’m very much not a fan of building castles in the air.)

Since we decided to include our children in our exploratory process, we invited ds10, ds12 and ds13 to accompany us on our trip. We wanted them to see the area itself, and meet some of the people living there.

We drove around with a real estate agent and viewed some homes from the outside, then went to visit two families. We had a pleasant time, and two of our sons later told us that they liked the idea of moving there.

Though my husband found it helpful to see the area and liked the two men he met, it wasn’t enough for him to make a decision one way or another.  He wanted to make a visit for a longer time to have a broader sense of what the community is like.

Two weeks later, we spent a Shabbos there. This time we brought dd18, ds7 and ds2 (the four other boys were away at a friend’s bar mitzva). I also reached out to an agent who had an online listing for a home that interested me, and set up a time to view the house.

After this more extended visit, my husband agreed that it looked like a place that our family could be happy.

Wait, let me highlight that because one sentence is too little to express this huge, massive moment of decision for us. It was at this point that we went from having a very theoretical possibility, to making a concrete decision about something we were going to do. We agreed that we wanted to move, and this is the place we wanted to move to. 

Avivah

To recap from my last post: I got deep clarity about my need for nature during my two days away at the Sea of Galilee; then I came home and wanted to share my newly awakened awareness with my husband.

I prefaced my comments by telling him that I wasn’t suggesting in any way that we take action of any sort, but I just wanted to be heard regarding something important to me.

He listened to me attentively as I then shared all that I shared with you in my last post, but in more detail. When I finished, he looked at me and said, “I really hear what you’re saying and that’s a real concern. So what do we do now?”

That was completely not what I was expecting.

Let me explain. Over the last few months, I’ve been uncharacteristically restless and have conceived various ideas with the hope that we find somewhere else in RBS where we could have either: more garden space/more indoor space/quieter neighborhood/somewhere with a view.

Every time I shared one of these ideas with my husband, he would shake his head and say, “We’re not going to move just to have a view of some trees.” Or, “I think we have enough space and we don’t need any more.”

I assumed that hearing yet more about my restlessness wasn’t going to be something he’d be very receptive to, despite his willingness to listen to each of my schemes. And so I was very taken aback by his response.

I rushed to once again reassure him that we didn’t need to do anything. But he was already thinking aloud about what possibilities there were.

My response? Complete stonewalling. Because as far as I was concerned, there were no possibilities that existed for us.

“We can’t move. We can’t leave here. Our kids are happy, it’s convenient for our married kids to visit, we can’t start over again.”

We can’t, we can’t, we can’t.

This is a place that I got mentally stuck for quite some time. I wanted something more but simply couldn’t see how it was possible. It felt selfish of me to move our family for my preferences and I couldn’t get past that.

It wasn’t until I began to consider the potential benefits to our children that I was able to slowly change gears. I started to think, ‘If living somewhere more expansive was good for me, maybe for similar reasons it would also be good for my children.” Hmm.

Hmm.

I slowly released the story I was telling myself about how unhappy everyone would be if we moved and started considering something different:

• my married kids (they would visit less often but perhaps they would stay longer if we had a more comfortable space to host them);
• my middle kids, ages 20, 18 and 17 (they all have one foot out the door into the adult world so it would affect them less);
• my next three boys (they would love the increased outdoor time),
• and for my youngest two, I really didn’t have any significant concerns (other than legal ramifications of moving with Rafael to a different district regarding foster care).

Changing my ideas about what I can have, what I am worthy of, believing it’s possible…this was hard.

What was incredibly striking to me after I was able to move into possibility thinking was how much the limitations in my  life were created…by me. It was my belief that I couldn’t have more that shut the door on thinking about how to create something better.

Avivah

Three weeks ago, I stopped at a crosswalk for a pedestrian waiting to cross and was rear ended at high force by the car behind me. Fortunately, the pedestrian wasn’t in the middle of the crossing, as my car was knocked forward into the crosswalk.

Also fortunate was that I was the only one in the car at the time. I got whiplash, which passed pretty quickly, and since then have had a nonstop headache, which obviously hasn’t passed at all. I need to make an appointment to deal with that.

As the result of the accident, my car was declared totaled since the insurance company said they would rather give me the value of the vehicle than pay for repairs that would amount to more than half the value of the car.  The car still runs and the damage is mostly cosmetic, but it made sense for us to accept their settlement and look at the accident as a way that G-d is upgrading us to something better for us.

Today we bought our new (to us) car – it’s  four years newer, 120,000 km fewer, more storage space, more features than our old car. The seller was a pleasure to deal with and it was a good experience all around.

But…right after we bought the new car, I got into it car and I was surprised to feel sadness wash over me. My old car wasn’t perfect; it was almost 14 years old and had high mileage, it had a non-working passenger window and cosmetic imperfections but I was so happy with it. Everything about it felt just right for me.

Sitting in that new car, I didn’t feel happy. I felt like it didn’t fit me. The front seating felt wrong, there was too little headspace… and I just felt sad.

There’s nothing wrong with the new car – truly, it’s a step up in every way and later on I was really able to appreciate how much nicer it is and really enjoy driving it. My sadness in that moment (it actually lasted for a few hours) was because my old car was familiar to me, so it felt perfect for me. It was the newness of the new car that felt uncomfortable, though my mind was trying to make up excuses (seating, head room) to explain that discomfort.

I was thinking about how true this is of life – there can be better and more expansive opportunities available to us, but we so often don’t reach out for them because they are unfamiliar and don’t feel good right away. We think that uncomfortable means bad.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes this desire for the familiar results in staying in emotional patterns that aren’t productive, in relationships that are unhealthy, or even keeping belongings that no longer serve us well.

My daughter-in-law commented yesterday that she thinks it’s unusual to make changes rather than settle for the status quo, and she sees that’s something I consistently do. It’s true that I am willing to do new things and make different decisions regardless of decisions in the past, but it’s not because I like change – I like stability and familiarity as much as the next person, maybe more!

However, I’m willing to allow myself to have a more expansive life and to do that, it means expanding my comfort zone. Sometimes it’s just a matter of giving myself time to process the change, to feel whatever emotions come up and to sit with them, and then I’m ready to move on.

By the way, I planned to buy a car from someone else, who called yesterday to say they changed their mind about selling. He said it was part of the family so long they can’t let it go.

And then when I drove with the seller of the car that I actually bought to take care of the transfer of ownership, she commented that she felt very emotional. She was selling because a family member was giving her a car that was more upgraded than hers. So why was she sad?

Because even good transitions are hard.

Avivah