Category Archives: relationships

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How to Be A Successful Human

So the last decade of my life, and in particular the last five, have been beyond educational and jam-packed with growth.  Some was growth I wanted and some, not so much.  But the end result is I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  All of it got me right here.

In 2009 my company went through leadership training.   The goal was to make us better leaders and  we did an exercise to uncover what was holding us back from being a successful leader.  From that I created the following list of where I felt I fell short as a successful leader:

I’d be a successful leader except…

  • I’m afraid others will think my ideas/goals are stupid/not worthwhile
  • I am doing only safe things.  I am sticking with only what I feel I am good at
  • I’m not always being honest with myself about what I want
  • I’m not challenging myself as much as I could
  • I’m playing it safe

Once that list was created, I slowly but surely changed those behaviors in a drastic way.  In my job I became exceptionally outspoken and even more direct than I thought possible.  That evolution for me was life changing and once I had proven to myself that I didn’t have to be afraid to express and be myself,  it began to create pressure in other parts of my life.  What I discovered, is that once you become aware you aren’t being authentically you and decide to change that, you really can’t put the genie back in the bottle.  Being authentic means that the barriers and blocks that you’ve accepted in your life previously, are no longer acceptable. You can’t be direct and open in one part of your life and then stuff it back in the box in other parts of your life, it just doesn’t work at least not for long.  I think that growth was a significant piece of the undoing of my marriage.  There were many signs before that made me realize that that union wasn’t going to be forever. It became clear to me that I was not being true to myself in that relationship and that there was really no room for it there.  It was only a matter of time before it was really over. But, when it was over and I no longer had to tap down my “me”, it freed up energy I could use elsewhere to bloom and grow.  That list of items where I felt like I wasn’t being as successful leader were turned into:

I am a successful human being because…

  • I’m not afraid of what others will think of my ideas and I will share them without being afraid of the response
  • I take risks and go outside of my comfort zone.  I try new things even if I am not instantly good at them.
  • I am honest with myself about what I want
  • I continuously challenge myself
  • I do not play it safe

And I would also add to that list:

  • I trust my gut and my brains to come up with a good solution
  • I understand that success is not instant and takes time to cultivate and grow and I appreciate the process along the way
  • I am as compassionate to myself as I am to others
  • I make sure my soul is fed before feeding others
  • I thank people who help me whether it be in deed, word or gesture
  • I actively listen to others with my ears, eyes, brain and heart
  • I communicate with others by not getting caught up in “the story”/drama of a problem, I ask if they want a solution or just an ear
  • I can’t understand what it’s like to live in someone else shoes, but I respect others point of view and emotions and always try to find common ground
  • I thank others for their attempts, efforts,  and successes and let them know how much I value and appreciate their work and energy
  • I thank myself for my attempts, efforts,  and successes and let myself know how much I value and appreciate my work and energy

Looking back on all of this I was a bit of a zombie in my life.  I was waiting, playing it safe and making so many trade-offs mostly for a sense of security and denying my true feeling and passions.  I no longer believe in that sense of security and not because I am trying to be a fatalist or feel burnt by experiences in my life. but because I trust my ability to be flexible and to change and because I understand that nothing is permanent.  Instead of that being scary, it’s exciting, it means that my life has room for growth, joy, challenges and excitement.  I will never be caught off guard by change because I already know it is all always changing.

I encourage you to write-up your own set of rules to live by, to be strong by.  Write them in present tense and don’t allow in any excuses.  Write it in the strongest of terms. This list doesn’t mean that you live them perfectly everyday, but you try to.  It is your own benchmark for behavior and your life.  This is a list for you to see how strong you are and remind yourself of your value, outside of the needs and commitments to others. Fortify and bolster yourself up, no one else can do it better than you can.

How to be a Successful Human www.cijablack.com Just Remember to Breathe

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Same Time Next Year

I recently had my annual lady camping event at my parents place. It was about this same time last year that I had started my blog and man, so much has changed. I am still with an amazing man, we moved in together and things are still going strong. He’s definately a keeper. I am continuing to learn more about myself, every single day. I have gone through some many major changes and I am just now starting to get my bearings. My divorce went though, my legal name change just went through and I just signed my last piece of paper to remove me from financial obligation on a mortgage with my ex. I thought I had moved on but on some deep level I have been holding my breath. And in doing so I have cocooned parts of me.

The relationship I am in is unlike anything I could have asked or frankly dreamed of in terms of communication, connection and partnership. I truly never thought this level of communication with a partner was possible and even pushes and challenges me in the best ways. I am a strong woman, always have been, and I took it for granted that meeting my match wasn’t possible, I was wrong. I have someone that is helping me to get myself out of my way, something that I tended to do in other relationships for the other person. It’s scary to be on the other end of the prodding stick of support, but also amazing. For the first time I have my own dreams and can think in terms of what I want. I have never done that and I can’t tell you how sad that made me to realize I had never allowed myself to do that. But thankfully we can always change.


I have never been more present in my life. I always lived in the future….rushing ahead, waiting for the perfect end result. I was rarely in the moment I was in. I know that I did that in part as some sort of self preservation; and a way for me to not completely take in the things I really didn’t like about my present. I spent lots of energy trying to “fix” my present so the future would be better and as we know that is not how it went. So this year has had me be anchored in the present moment, witness to my current life and appreciating it. I can’t tell you how amazing that has been how full things feel. I feel thankful every day for my circumstances and who I share my daily trials with and who and what is in my life…even when I am cranky on a cold Monday morning, I am thankful that is the life I have and having a person that mirrors that approach changes everything in the best ways.

I am still working on some facets of being present, as alwas a work in progress…some are actual physical actions like being present when I eat and not just shoveling it down. I think I have spent most of my life eating and not really even tasting what I put in my mouth. There are whole other barage of things that come up around food that I could fill a blog with and then some.

I also find that not being present led me to not being direct with my feelings. For those that know me well that seems odd to say, but what I have realized is that I am direct with concepts and ideas that are not directly about something that effects my being, so for instance stuff at work for the most part I am the voice of reason, I am the person that speaks up, with mostly positive and sometimes varied response. With my friends and seeing them go through their own trials, I have tons of advice some want to hear, some they need to hear and I don’t really shy away from giving my opinion. But what I have come to realize is that for the things that I think and hold close, things that are at the soft underbelly of my psyche I tend to hold back and sometimes stuff down and if they aren’t gently coaxed out, I don’t say them. I guess my thought is, I find them to be uncomfortable in my own head, so why share them out there with the world and have them trampled on? It is quite a revelation to myself that I have been holding back in this way, I came up with a clever way to hide this particular fact from myself and have built up a world in which a huge part of my personality was “the one that speaks up. But the fact is, I do speak up, but no so much for myself. As a result I have not been great at setting boundaries with my energy and other people. I have not always stated what is important to me, what hurts me, what I need. And in this effort to NOT get hurt by NOT sharing all of this, I find I don’t know how to speak up for myself. Somewhere down the line I think I also got the message that there are just things you don’t burden other people with and that their comfort is more important that your own. Somewhere along the way I learned that speaking up for my “self” was selfish. I am finding that not only is speaking up for yourself not selfish it is critical for sane survival.

I find that the danger in not speaking up is that I stuff it down, I eat those feelings (literally and figuratively). Not speaking up and voicing your needs also allows you to stockpile resentment, I did plenty of that with my marriage. And doing that long enough creates a toxic relationship bomb. I over promise to people, and say yes even if I don’t want to or later realize it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I am starting to set boundaries and state my personal needs more clearly in all facets of my life. So if you thought I was direct before, just wait. ;)

My hope with saying what I need to say is that I am able to find a healthy way to release this pressure in my soul. I do need things, things just for me, things that feed my spirit. I no longer feel this is selfish or that thsi is negative….we all have to be selfish sometimes, it’s self preservation.

I am thankful for this past year and really thankful for my whole life. All of those experiences have brought me here to this very moment. As always I am excited to see what is coming up next but I also love what is directly in front of me at this very moment.