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Max Out Happy

Too blessed to be stressed.

October 29, 2015

We are so quick to be automatic – in our actions, in our habits, our responses to people.  When someone asks, “How are you?” we generally give the, “Doing well/I’m good/Fine, how are you?”  This is something I have tried to change in my life.  I try out new phrases:  I can’t complain, everything is fantastic, life is good, etc. and then I make sure to let the other person know that I really care when I ask how they’re doing, too.  One of my favorite responses to give, though, is, “Too blessed to be stressed.”  I’ve noticed that I get a nice chuckle out of most people when I use that one.

When I was teaching full time a couple of years ago and enrolled full-time in grad school, I did my fair share of waiting tables. The owners of the restaurant I worked at, Salem Street Pub, gave all of the servers a little Christmas gift each year – and P.S. If you’ve never been there, check it out for some delicious burgers, local beer, and a perfect laid-back vibe.  One year, I got a painted wine glass with a blonde lady on it that read, “Too blessed to be stressed.”  It was kind of meant to be a silly and funny gift, but I have thought about that wine glass so often because it became a phrase that I started to use whenever things didn’t go my way.

One morning last week, I was running late for school, frantically trying to make my breakfast smoothie, a cup of coffee, get my lunch together, get my dogs together, get my life together…I reached up too quickly and knocked down the ‘too blessed to be stressed’ wine glass; it crashed into a million pieces.  I breathed in, and then I breathed out, because yoga has taught me to find the gap between stimulus and response, and in that few short seconds I just told myself to let it go.  It’s just a wine glass, Jules.  Freaking out, shouting, cussing, letting myself get in a bad mood – none of that would serve me or help me get to school on time.  But how often do we do just that, over the tiniest moments?  So I shooed my dogs away from the broken glass, looked at them, and literally said out loud, “It’s okay guys.  We are too blessed to be stressed about a broken wine glass on a Tuesday.”

And isn’t that the truth?  We create so much stress for ourselves in life – I have been there and I do it, too, believe me.  But sometimes we have to realize that there is beauty in even the ugliest situations, there is a reason for everything, and that the glass is always half full if you choose to see it that way.

I encourage you, me, all of us, to enjoy our moments.  Realize that you have a b  e  a  u  t  i  f  u  l life, simply because you are alive.  Every day, try to find something that you can appreciate, even if all you can appreciate that day is the air in your lungs or the heart beating in your chest or the working brain in your head.  We are all moving through this life, living in a society full of negativity, superficiality, and greed.  But it’s also a dazzling world of love, complexity, and optimism if you choose to see it.  We spend so much time stressing about the future and the past that we act out of habit and repetition and we forget to be right here, right now.  By being content and appreciating our moments, we teach ourselves to be less greedy, less negative, less superficial.  We slowly minimize our stress and realize that most of the things we worry about aren’t even worth our time, because the scenarios we create in our head never end up as we see them, anyway.

We are too blessed to be stressed.  Believe that.  Some things are worth our attention, but so many aren’t.  Let go of what doesn’t serve you and focus on the joys in your life – it might be harder to choose joy, but it is far superior to living in self-created stress and negativity.

If anyone finds a cute graphic tee to add to my embarrassing collection of quoted clothing, let me know 😉

Love this 'Too Blessed To Be Stressed' Metallic Canvas by Image Canvas on #zulily! #zulilyfinds:

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Filed in: Lifestyle, Wellness • by maxouthappy •

The Passion Planner: for those of us who are passionate about plans.

October 20, 2015

This one goes out to all my Type A kindred spirits…and to those of you who are maybe a little too breezy and need to make a plan for once in your life.

Around this time of year, it seems like life gets hectic – the weather changes, decorations come out, and the invites start rolling in for Halloween festivities, fall gatherings, and holiday parties.  Don’t get me wrong; I am not complaining.  I happen to be a gal who enjoys staying busy, and anyone who knows me knows that I love a good planner.  The truth is, holiday season or not, I generally have my hands on a few different projects, and I refuse to sacrifice fun events and time with my loved ones…so my schedule stays pretty full.  With recently going back to teaching and beginning my yoga teacher training, starting this blog, and writing an eBook with my friend Tony, I knew this year was going to be every bit as packed as the last few, and that I’d need a heavy-duty planner to get me through.  I try to be breezy and spontaneous, I really do.  And every now and then you might just catch me asking about last-minute plans or deciding to take a day trip to anywhere.  But the heart wants what it wants, and I can’t help myself:  I love plans.  I love lists.  I love writing color-coded, bulleted lists and crossing things off one at a time.  If that’s wrong, then I just don’t want to be right.

But whether you’re a Type A champion weirdo like me or a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type of person, the bottom line is that we all have to keep track of our crazy lives, and in order to make sure I reach my goals and follow through on my commitments, all the while remembering everyone’s birthdays, anniversaries, and wedding dates, I have to keep up with a planner. (Or do I get to?!  Someone out there tell me I’m not alone in my passion for organization!)

Long story short, I came across the Passion Planner when a friend of mine shared a link to it on Facebook.  At the time, it was just barely getting started as a business, but I was hooked immediately.  This was the planner for planners.  This was the closest I had come to the planner of my dreams.  And it was only $30.  $30 for a whole entire year of my life mapped out on lined paper.  However, I had unfortunately just received a very nice Emily Ley planner for my birthday that I just had to have (not knocking those planners – they are also very lovely).  Thus began my wait; I couldn’t justify getting a Passion Planner when I had JUST received one…so I made the difficult choice to wait until my planner ran out this December.  And I was faithful…until my life really took a new direction in a lot of ways.  Time for a clean slate.  I made it a full 9 months before purchasing my academic Passion Planner for 2015-2016 and I haven’t looked back.

The creator, Angelia Trinidad, came up with the idea of the Passion Planner after she graduated; her aim was to help people achieve their goals and dreams through their daily activities.  The site has links to download undated, printable planner layouts for those who are strapped for cash, which you just don’t see much of these days.  The company also has a pay it forward program, where you can sponsor someone else with a planner.

Things I love about the Passion Planner:

  1. Each day goes from 6am-10:30pm, which is fantastic for someone like me who is up with the birds and stays busy until bedtime.
  2. Each day’s column is wide enough for a small sticky note, which I use to write out my lesson plans for teaching.  This saves me from needing a separate ‘lesson-planning notebook.’
  3. Each day has a spot for ‘today’s focus,’ so I can easily either create priorities for each day or remind myself of important events like birthdays, teacher work days, days for errands, etc.
  4. Each weekly layout has an inspirational quote, a box for ‘this week’s focus,’ and a box for ‘good things that happened,’ so you always remind yourself to express gratitude for even the smallest things.
  5. It has a nice silky bookmark to keep your place.  Enough said.
  6. It is a lovely, floppy, leathery-feeling planner and does not have a spiral, which I really appreciate.  Spirals get messed up so easily and they get in the way for those of us who are lefties!
  7. Each week’s layout also has a space for work AND personal To-Dos, as well as an open space for notes, reminders, brainstorming, etc.
  8. It has a monthly calendar layout as well as the daily layout – this is very important to me for reasons that are too nerdy and too lengthy to write about.
  9. Before each new monthly layout, the planner asks you to see what progress you’ve made towards your goals since the last month.  It might sound cheesy, but it’s one thing to have big dreams and quite another to make them happen – and that comes with planning and recording progress.  It has a whole brain mapping and goal-setting theme that carries throughout the year.
  10. Finally, the planner is good for whoever you are – whether you are a student, a parent, self-employed, or someone with a job who is just trying to get your life together…it works.

(I think it needs to be said here that the people over at Passion Planner don’t know me from Adam’s house cat.  They did not in any way sponsor or suggest this post.  I hope they don’t mind that I am bragging about them on my blog.)

So, if life gets crazy for you and your cell phone just won’t quite cut it for scheduling, the Passion Planner can organize your agenda, your goals, hopes, dreams, to-do lists, brainstorms, notes…really anything you could ask for.  It can carry you through the busy fall season, into the hectic holidays, and land you successfully into a new year.  Plus, it comes in two sizes so you can decide how portable you want it to be.

From a very early age, I’ve known I have a tiny bit a healthy bit of OCD when it comes to organization…but aside from my Type A tendencies, having old planners is like looking back at your old diaries – it’s an awesome way for me to look back at my life and remember important moments, see how far I’ve come, or realize how blessed I am to be able to max out this one beautiful life that I’ve been given.

Now I just have to find time to learn how to play the piano, get my Master’s thesis published, and get my PhD.   #goals

View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

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View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

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View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

View More: http://jparkerphotography.pass.us/julias-blog

(Had to throw in a corgi…props to Whitney Rizzi, my BFF and the mind behind www.jparkerphotos.com for these pictures)

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Filed in: Education, Lifestyle • by maxouthappy •

Twenty-eight.

September 25, 2015

Happy fall, y’all!  (Why do we love saying that?  Well…maybe you don’t love saying that if you’re not from the south, but I am…so I do).  I can’t believe that summer has faded away, and the crispness of leaves falling will be coming soon.

I love this time of year – there is so much transition, so much letting go and opening up to new possibilities.  Along with change, fall brings hope.  It’s a clean slate, a time to reset.  You can rewrite your whole life while you sip a pumpkin spice latte.  All jokes aside, though, I’ve really been in a transition mindset lately.  I took a yoga class last night at my studio and the teacher gave the most beautiful transition theme throughout class (side note:  it was also one of the most physically challenging fitness classes I have taken, ever.) It hit me right where I needed to be hit, as usual.  How do they always know?!

It’s my birthday tomorrow, and I’ll be 28 years young.  I’m really not worried about getting another year older.  I spent a lot of time in 27 trying to force myself into some type of mold.  I was doing everything I could to be this way, to look like this, to be better, and to be more.  But somewhere around January or February, I started to get really tired of trying to ‘fix’ myself.  I started to realize that maybe I wasn’t even broken.  That’s when I started practicing yoga.  That’s when everything started to shift in my life and that is when I started to choose joy.  I have always been a happy person and I guess people would describe me as bubbly, but 27 was tough.  I had to make some difficult and devastating decisions, and I found myself in a place I never thought I would.

The beginning of 27, with the same fantastic people I will ring in 28 with.
The beginning of 27, with the same fantastic people I will ring in 28 with.  Yep, that’s a tiara.

But you know what?  Here I am.  28 is here at midnight, and I feel alive, thankful, blessed, loved, and stronger than ever.  I have so much to be grateful for; don’t we all?  We just forget to realize it.  We let all of these fabulous moments pass us by without ever really noticing them or taking time to have gratitude for them.  I’m making a promise to myself to notice the fabulous moments.  A day is the same day, whether we approach it with joy and optimism or negativity and defeat.  We get to make that choice every day when we wake up.  One of my dearest, true blue friends has a sign on her office door that says, “Today is a good day to have a good day.”  It really, truly is.  Stuff happens and sometimes shit gets real, but every day is a good day to have a good day.

I love birthdays, and I love getting another fresh start just as the seasons are changing each year…but the truth is, you can start fresh at any moment if you are willing.  Let go of the things that came in the last season of your life (see what I did there?!) that no longer serve you.  Let those things go and embrace whatever is coming your way.

I have had a request to post about Yoga Teacher Training, so look for that coming soon, along with other, not-so-serious posts…but this is my obligatory fall/seasons of life post.

 

28, I’ll see you in a couple of hours.  🙂

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Filed in: Lifestyle • by maxouthappy •

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Welcome to Max Out Happy! I am a high school teacher, wife, and mom trying to spread a little happy around wherever I can. I'm glad you're here!
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