Imagine a life full of more first moments, with a focus on the people, causes, and passions that matter most to you. It\u2019s within your grasp, but not without a bit of planning and effort. Our mission at Life and Whim is to help you create the space and time necessary to live big through small moments.
We are particularly passionate about children, and believe that the more time kids spend outside hiking in forests, skiing down mountains, and frolicking on beaches, the more they grow and prosper. First moments can happen anywhere, but we're especially interested in the ones that take place in nature. The great outdoors inspires greatness in all of us.
We offer free returns for 30 days. We ask that the items be unworn and unwashed. To process a return, email us at custome...@lifeandwhim.com. We will email you a free prepaid return shipping label. Repackage the returned items along with the packing slip in either the original shipping bag or packaging of your choice (make sure there are no other labels on it), and apply the shipping label. When we receive your return, we will credit your original form of payment, and send you an email to let you know it has been processed.
But the question I keep coming back to is this: What wisdom does this alternate version of you have to offer? It can be easy to gaze down the road not taken and imagine it might have been smoother. But if you could meet the person who took that path, they would likely find so much to like about your life.
Mine was 5 years ago when I felt like I should dump my career on its head and move back into my parents house. I was devastated. My mom passed suddenly 9 months later and that is why I have been home. I am the oldest and have slipped into that role. Two siblings got married, a whole lot more loss, therapy and a lot of life has been lived. The sun is coming out and I hope it touches my life next.
What about the meaning of life? Ding pondered for a moment and said, "The meaning of life should be in those special, those sparkling moments, not in the daily life, those ordinary days, but in living for those unique moments." In Ding's eyes, love is also very important because it is the happiness in this lifetime, and he likes to read novels and movies that depict love. "You probably want to get good results in chess, to be famous for ages, to be remembered by people in the future. Some people may have lived a miserable life, but they left something behind, wrote something down, and their goal was to be immortal. But I am not that great, I value happiness in my life as well."
Has anyone ever asked you what the craziest moment in your life is? Well, the average person probably spits back a response about the time they went skydiving or a time they experimented with drugs. My response is a little different.
At Women Together, we are always trying to get to know each other better and in different ways. So this month we asked members of the Women Together team: Who in your life has taught you something important and how have they shaped who you are today?
Celebrations are powerful, and yet sometimes it can be hard to think of how to celebrate life other than throwing a party or going out for a nice dinner. In this post I want to share some unique ideas for ways to celebrate to inspire you to come up with your own celebratory traditions and rituals.
When I think of the hardest moments of my life, ironically, many have turned out to be blessings in disguise. While this isn't the most severe example, one, in particular, was being pretty much kicked out of my Ph.D. program at the University of Georgia in 2016. This was after I quit all my jobs in California (despite good momentum), packed my car full of my belongings, and drove across the country for over a week, thus forfeiting my intern license to practice therapy in California (an unlicensed therapist is now called "associate," but before 2019 it was "intern").
As my personal example demonstrates, life is a total rollercoaster; what seems like good or bad news now can turn out to be the opposite in the future. Every now and then you are able to discover a new high, a ceiling-breaking moment, whereas in other moments you may feel like you're falling deeper and deeper into hell. While these experiences can be incredibly tough, they present us with valuable opportunities to trust life and cultivate personal growth and learning.
Here I briefly underscore six key ways we can turn life's hardest moments into powerful learning and growing opportunities. Most of our hard moments really can be "school fees." If you work at this mindset shift like your life depended on it (as it kind of does), you can set yourself up to never really lose at the game of life.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity and possibly also grow stronger in the process. It is a fundamental quality that enables us to turn life's hardest moments into learning opportunities. When we face difficulties, instead of succumbing to despair, we can choose, as hard as it may seem in the moment, to embrace resilience.
Turning life's hardest moments into learning opportunities requires self-reflection and examination. When we encounter difficulties, it's essential to take a step back and ask ourselves tough questions. What led to this situation? What can we learn from it? How can we grow from it?
As ironic as this may sound, life would be incredibly boring and possibly meaningless if we had no problems to solve. Difficult moments often require us to think critically and find solutions to complex problems in ways we wouldn't otherwise. These challenges can be seen as opportunities to develop and refine our problem-solving skills. When we encounter obstacles, we are pushed to explore new perspectives, seek creative solutions, and make informed decisions. Without obstacles, we wouldn't ever discover what we're truly capable of and a lot of our potential would be squandered.
Hardship has a way of reshaping our priorities and helping us distinguish between what truly matters and what is superficial. Life's toughest moments can prompt us to reevaluate our values, goals, and aspirations. We may realize that some of our previous ambitions were misaligned with our authentic selves.
There is no dark without light, and there is no hot without cold. Without the difficult moments, we would not fully appreciate the moments of joy, success, and achievement. These challenging times provide context and depth to our experiences, making the highs not only possible but more meaningful. In this spirit, I am perpetually thankful that I went through that experience in Georgia to appreciate more of my blessings in the present.
As corny as it sounds, it couldn't be truer: life's hardest moments, even if they may seem impossible to overcome at the moment, are not devoid of purpose. They are profound opportunities for growth, learning, and self-discovery.
Embracing resilience, self-reflection, empathy, problem-solving skills, and reassessing priorities can help us navigate and transform adversity into valuable life lessons. When we view life's challenges as opportunities to learn and evolve, we empower ourselves to become more resilient, compassionate, and wise individuals. In doing so, we find that even in the darkest of times, there is the potential for growth and the opportunity to turn pain into strength. Mastering that skill is nothing less than a superpower.
I didn't have a meaningful moment with my mother before she died. Well, that's not true, my life with her was filled with significant moments. I guess what I mean is that I never had the Hollywood Moment that, in the movies, is part and parcel of death from a terminal illness.
For a long time, I've fixated on the moments I did have at the end of my mother's life and mourned the ones I didn't. Logically, I know this is foolish. When I test this idea of a "meaningful moment" at the end of life against reality, I see that it should be looked upon as a rarity as opposed to the norm. How could a Hollywood Moment ever be assumed when so many people die in ways that make it impossible?
Screw Hollywood. If I must compare life to a narrative (and apparently, I must), I'd say it's more like a good book that you never want to finish. When you do, you realize there was no way the ending could have ever lived up to all the great stuff in the middle. So instead of relishing the ending, you flip back through to reread your favorite parts and relive the moments that, in hindsight, were significant themes, turning points, and revelations.
In life, we're not very good at predicting which moments will matter later on. It's only after the story ends that we're able to see the significance of certain events. We assume big moments like milestones, beginnings, and ends will be the most important. When in truth, many of the moments that give us pause - either because they cause us the most pain or because they are the dearest - quietly happen somewhere in the middle.
Sometimes the moments that feel significant after a loved one's death become 'stuck points' in our grief. In this context, stuck points might be the thoughts and memories that remain distressing over time and which a person continues to struggle with in an ongoing way.
Technically 'stuck points' aren't emotions, they're thoughts that result in distressing emotion. For example, a person might have the thought, "I should have done more to save my loved one," and as a result, they feel guilt. These points can derive from big obvious events, and they can also revolve around moments that are surprising, small, and seemingly mundane.
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