Cristina Guarneri's Blog, page 6

Being Empowered

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We’ve been hearing about empowerment on the news and on social media. There is a power in personal empowerment, since it is about looking at ourselves and who it is we want to become, and being aware of ourselves for being unique individuals. It is through personal empowerment that we are able to develop the confidence and the strength to develop goals and to reach our potential.

We all have strength and weaknesses, skills that we use every day, but often times we remain unaware of them, we undervalue ourselves, and our abilities. What’s important about empowerment is that we have the ability to make positive choices. Developing self-awareness, an understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, and knowing our limitations are key to having personal empowerment. What’s also important to understand is that we can take steps to achieve and set goals for ourselves. Either those goals are short or long-term, they are able to develop new skills and confidence that is essential to having empowerment.

Anyone of us can set goals for ourselves. At the same time, knowing where to start can be difficult. One important part of building empowerment in ourselves is staying positive. Using positive language lets our self-image become reflective of our words. Talking positively about ourselves allows us to acknowledge our strengths and our weaknesses, which is empowering.  We can empower ourselves and those around us by choosing to use positive words such as “will” or “can.” These words promote positive action to happen. Rather than “might” or “maybe,” which causes us to hesitate in reaching our goals.

It is also important to avoid being critical and negative. Truth is, once words are spoken, they can’t be taken back. If at all costs you need to be critical, say it in a constructive way by using positive or supporting words. Also, by using open questions that given opportunities for explanation bring to power. Questions that only allow for a yes or no answer leave people to feel powerless, instead of allowing for solutions to problems. Solutions can help us to set goals and work out a plan that can lead to empowerment.

Personal empowerment is not something that we do once in our life. It’s a lifetime process of constant personal development. As circumstances and life changes, so does our need for empowerment. Empowerment allows for what is meant to be to feel capable of doing what it takes with great effort to overcome any lack of confidence that we might have, and to challenge ourselves to achieve. This is what brings us to know our own limits and ask for help when needed, its self-awareness. It’s the strength within ourselves to improve on ourselves and to set personal improvement goals. The more empowered we become, the more we are willing and able to help others to be empowered.

It’s Hard to Make Friends

From elementary school through college, making lasting friendships was much easier than when we get older. We find that people become less willing to make new connections with one another. That’s difficult to accept, especially if you view your friends to be a lot like an extended family. Not everyone marries and has children, either it is by choice or because they just didn’t find a person that was right for them. Whatever the reason, friendship is an important part of life.

As people, we do need other people. Friendships, and relationships, in general, having healing properties not only for the mind but for the mind. However, as we get older, something changes in our ability to make new friends. Easily, you could meet someone that has the same interests in music, have similar hobbies, and even watch the same television shows. Yet, even with so many shared interests, the relationship goes sour. You go from being “friends,” but not quite friends. You keep trying to go from that borderline of friend/acquaintance to friend, but life gets in the way.

This isn’t unusual as we get older. There are many new people that will come into our lives through work, your children’s school, and let’s not forget Facebook. You can have thousands of Facebook friends, but in reality, have less than a handful. The building of actual close friends that we use to make, those friendships that we made as kids or in college, the ones that you could call in a crisis. Those are the friendships that have disappeared.  My only belief to this happening is that as we approach our late 40s and on, we’ve faded away that exploration stage in our lives. Instead, time becomes less available, our priorities change, and we become more selective in who we want in our friendships.

No matter how many friends you make, they seem to fade over time. We don’t make best friends like we use to, the way we did in our early twenties. Rather, we resign ourselves to situation friendships, the “we are kind of friends,” at least for now.  People have stopped realizing how much they have neglected to restock their group of friends, at least until they experience a big life event.

The truth is that as we reach our forties, we tend to interact with fewer people. This is especially true as we approach midlife. We, in turn, grow closer to the friends that we already have in life. This is because we have an internal clock that goes off inside of us when a big event happens. It reminds us that time is become less and less, so we pull back on exploring new friendships and concentrate on the here and now. We focus on what is important to us, so we’re not interested in going to a party when we can spend time with our families.

We have missed out on the conditions that have helped us to build new friendships, the type of friends found in the 1950s and 1960s, living in neighborhoods where people encourage interaction and being around people who are willing to let their guard down and confide in one another.  Developing a bond has become less common. This results in friendships having little to no foundation and falling apart.

Somewhere after thirty, we experience internal shifts in how we approach friendship. Self-discovery gives way to having self-knowledge, and we become let willing to let just anyone into our inner circle. The bar is higher than we were when we were younger when we would meet anyone at any given time. The manipulators, drama queens, egomaniacs, the less mature don’t make the cut anymore. Having been hardened by experience, many of us to develop a more fatalistic view of friendship.

Often times our standards change as to what is meant to actually be friends. We’ve come to use the term more loosely. Making the real kind, the brother or sister kind of friendships are much harder now. We instead fill the gaps in life with people by a specific need, a workout friend, a shopping friend, or a sports friend. It takes courage for people to take the first step. However, what is meant to be will be. Hopefully, we can make it easier for someone by taking that brave step towards friendship.

Technology Relationships

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. It’s supposed to give us more time to do the things that we want to do in life. We are to be able to spend more time with friends, family, and making time for ourselves, but it feels like just the opposite. Instead, we’ve become busier and we use technology as a way of communicating to build or keep relationships going. It’s more than just living out of state that has changed living, but our priorities. I never thought that there would come a time where the family unit would become so broken, and a computer screen would be my main way of speaking.

I never thought that there would be a time that the only way I would speak to someone would be through Facebook, Twitter, and cell phone messaging. I never imaged that the day would come where I would hear of people panicking just because they left their cell phones home. We have become too dependent on technology to get through the day. I often feel sorry for younger generations that I didn’t experience playing jumping rope or hopscotch outside. That’s where friendships developed when we were younger, and many times, those were the relationships that carried us into our adult lives.

It’s almost unheard of today to have face-to-face conversations. Time is of the essence, more importantly, we have lost interest in making time. Real life relationships have been replaced with real-time relationships. We don’t need to have the bravery or strength to have conversations, and when faced with the opportunity, it can be uncomfortable. Not because talking is difficult, but that we have forgotten how to use and to continue developing an essential skill. It becomes challenging to get past the dependency on using technology and to have conversations.

Since technology has become the standard way of having relationships. It also feels like a very lonely world, where what’s meant to be isn’t about two people growing old together, or two people sharing a lifetime of friendship between them. Instead, growing older has become two people and their technology that has replaced the true relationship. Isn’t it the memories that bring us making time for one another? Aren’t memories what keep us going when times seem tough? I tend to think so, we need to bring back the idea of building memories with friends and families. We need to bring something more to remember what we wrote on someone else’s Facebook wall. It’s sad to see how common it is for younger generations to not have friends or very little friends. It’s so much different than what generations before them experienced. Where we built connections with each other and created a lifetime of lasting relationships and memories.

The changing times that have broken down relationships because of technology can even be seen in television commercials. Hershey had a commercial of a person holding a s’mores with the caption, “making time for family memories.” This is so true since memories are the most beautiful pictures our minds can paint and nothing can ever erase them.

Keeping Love Alive

An all-time favorite movie about a screenwriter who falls in love with a famous bachelor, it’s one of the few movies that I can’t resist watching. There is an excitement and hope that even through the ups and downs of their relationship, in the end, I hope that they will be together. That’s what love is about. Getting through the ups and downs of life and through it all, we remain together. At least this is what I’ve told myself so many times, but the truth feels that we have forgotten about real love and replaced it with the fantasy of being in love. Are we just pushing love away, or is that we have fallen out of the idea of being in love?

There is truth in how often people push love away. We reject love by withholding our emotions and pull back. Perhaps it’s the fear of being hurt or the fear of getting to close. As people get closer to each other in a relationship, they have a tendency to reach a point where they get scared and pull back. We create distance and start withholding the qualities that bring value to ourselves. The process is often unconscious and can happen unintentionally, but the effects can be lasting ones. We resent the things that we use to love in the people around us, and our internal defense system that cuts off our feelings.

Past experiences and hurts can bring about self-protection, but instead, it serves to limit our lives and our relationships. Think about the last time that you felt feelings for a person and suddenly warning lights to flash before us. It’s the thinking that tells us that “this is moving too fast.” It’s what puts the brakes on our feelings. It’s the thinking that “I’m going to get hurt” that brings us to step away from something or someone that could make us happy.

When we act on defenses, we convince ourselves that we really don’t care much at all about the relationship. We can become cold inside and find a million excuses for why we shouldn’t interact with someone, and at different degrees, we stop having feelings for them. We stop giving any importance to our emotions and instead turn to criticism. We give off only the negative and distort the other person’s love or feelings. This is the downward cycle for how we reject love and to be loved, and instead, we enter a fantasy bond. We forgo love for the fantasy of being in love. We resist the temptation of becoming a “we” and become a “you and me.” We become connected and avoid making a connection with another person.

We can free ourselves to what is meant to be. We can free ourselves to the types of reactions to being in love by making sense of them and not giving power to them to the point that it affects the way that we behave. We can make the choice to engage in being in love by allowing ourselves to find love and to stay there, both as a priority and keeping it alive and well in our lives.

 

Memories

If you have ever watched the movie, The Way We Were, then you are familiar with the ever-famous song Memories. As I think about the holidays, I am reminded of how life is unpredictable. How quickly life can change. Life is so short, and within an instant, the life that we are accustomed to could very well be different. I think this is the reason why the song Memories has always saddened me. It is a gentle reminder of how the holidays each year are always different. Some grow up, move out, grow older, and move away. Some relationships last what seem like an eternity, while others seem to fade away.

As we think about memories, it’s important to think about where we are at that moment. To be kind and forgiving. To build relationships with family and friends, and to appreciate what we do have, rather than what we wished we had in life. All of it could change in a second. I can remember growing up spending time with my grandparents. It was the little things that they taught me. I can remember sitting in the living room learning how to knit. I can remember standing in the kitchen in my grandmother’s house and learning how to make Italian Christmas cookies. These were the traditions that I remember. The memories that brought meaning to me.

The holidays are a wonderful time to celebrate, but for many, it’s a time of loneliness and the reflection of memories. I think about that one day I won’t have the same holidays as I’m used to. That I won’t have the same people in my life then as I do today, and like the song’s lyrics, I think about important it is to remember.  We make our lives purposely busy. We can forget that the memories that we once had, the people we have now, the ones we may have in the future, and the time that we spend with them are more valuable than any workday.

As we approach another holiday, think about the memories, the pictures that we have etched in our minds, and the laughter that fills our souls. Think about at that moment what life was like and how it was re-written today.  Celebrate every relationship knowing that no matter what resolutions are made, how many promises were broken, memories stay with us for a lifetime and can be replenished with more. We can keep the memories of the past in our hearts, and the newness of those to come in our minds, it’s what’s meant to be. Happy New Year!

Closer than Family

For many, friends have become our families. Perhaps speaking to family that you haven’t seen in a while or maybe even over the past year. No matter however long that it has been, we find that it’s the distance of family, both emotionally as well as the miles. However, what is found most interesting is that family isn’t about being related. It’s about the relationships that we choose to have with people. As a child, my grandmother had a family friend, who was treated just as she was family. Harriet would go everywhere with my grandmother and her sister. They were the original “Golden Girls.” I often would go out to the dinner and the ever-popular department stores like Bamberger’s with them. I learned a lot of things from them, including doing the sign of the cross when passing a Catholic Church. I never knew that existed until Harriet would say to me, “We’re passing the church. Do the sign of the cross,” and she would show me the correct way of doing so each time.  Harriet went to most, if not all of our family events. Unfortunately, my grandmother, her sister, and Harriet have passed away, but their memories continue to live on in me. I think that if they were here today, they wouldn’t change their relationship of going out together on what I would call “adventures.” They would still be talking on the phone and continuing to be just like they were, family. I think that many people today are becoming closer to friends than they are their own families.

We see more so how people tend to move away from neighborhoods where their families had once lived. For various reasons, they have to make the sort of connections in a new environment that might have, in the past, been provided by the family. Friends are for many the people that we choose to have in our lives. We may not share ancestry, but the truth is blood wasn’t thicker than water.  The role of the family has also changed. In the 1950s, the family consisted of a father, mother, and children, known as the standard family. This type of family was shown on television and quite different from the family of the 21st century. There is a more universal definition of family, which consists of a group of friends to be family, and adult who consider pets as family as well. Today, children are also often raised in single-parent homes, by grandparents or by homosexual parents. Some families opt to have no children, or cannot have children due to some medical or emotional barrier.

The idea that parents and children make a family is a basic definition; however, in order to accurately acknowledge other family structures, a broader definition is necessary. In addition to a more universal family definition, there are also plenty of people who consider a group of friends to be family and adults who consider pets as defining members of the family unit.  Many people consider friends to be as close, or even closer than immediate or extended family. People who have lost close family members may create a family unit of friends with similar interests and goals to become replacements or enhancements to a lacking family structure. This type of family unit, while untraditional, can be just as close, if not closer, than a traditional structure. Friends that are chosen by an individual may be considered to be an important part of their family life. This is in addition to having supportive families. The norm is an extensive network of friends who they consider to be a second family in addition to their blood relatives.

We may not be blessed with the best family, but in reading a great quote to that is meant to live by. Although, the most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them and others you don’t, but in the end, they’re the people you always come home to. Sometimes it’s the family you’re born into. Sometimes it’s the one we make for ourselves of close friends, even friends that you may have known since childhood.  Just like my grandmother and aunt had many years ago with Harriet. When I think about it, I was closer to her than I was to my many of born relatives. It goes to show that family is changing. It’s not about what family that you are born into, but the relationships that are just meant to be.

Don’t Stop Believing

Don’t Stop Believing-Journey

It was back in the eighties when I heard my first Journey song. I can remember hearing the lyrics and the vocals of Steve Perry as he sang songs like Sherry and Open Arms.  These songs brought more than just a good beat for me, but memories of events that had happened in life. I think that’s why music has such a powerful influence on the soul, and although I will occasionally hear a song or two on the radio, I often wondered why new music hadn’t been recorded.

About a week ago, I had read an interview that Steve Perry had done for The Associated Press. I was surprised when I had read that he had left the music scene. He never hummed a song to the radio, or sang in the shower; the music that he made come alive for listeners was gone. As one of the most powerful voices in rock ‘n’ roll, the front man for Journey had given up on making music. I could understand how the music industry could drive away great performers. What was fascinating about this interview was what drove Steve Perry back to singing. A broken heart.

In a quote, Steve Perry told the world that, “a heart is not complete until it’s completely broken.” For me, that’s a powerful way of thinking about giving up one passion for another. Out of a misstep with his then-girlfriend, he begged for her forgiveness. The one thing that she asked of him was to sing to her. He resisted, but in a plea to salvage their relationship he sang for her, with the promise that should anything happen to her, that he wouldn’t hide away from society.

When she passed away, Steve Perry kept his promise to her. Now with a new album coming out, he has found his passion again. Calling it a life-sustaining passion to return to performing and singing again, I often wonder how many times that I didn’t follow my passion. How many times that I have hidden away from society because of fear or the thought that what I was doing wouldn’t be accepted. I think that if there is one lesson to learn after reading the words of Steve Perry was to Don’t Stop Believing. This is so true.

There are many people who play life safe. What I mean by that is we may stay in the same job or the same relationship, whatever it may be, for the sake of comfort. We forget about following our passions, our hearts. Some of us live in the past for fear of the future. Others live in the comfort zone of life because it’s safe. Whatever the reason may be, it could be the reason for unhappiness.

If we think about it. Eat the cake. Buy that new sweater. Have faith and say what’s on your heart. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we have today to work towards living happily for each day. What is meant to be will be, but we will never know if we don’t try. We live according to daydreams. Or we could live our dreams. Whichever one it is, don’t stop believing.

 

 

Riding a Bike

Life is filled with changes every day. Some of those changes are most difficult to go through than others, but I also think about how that change affects the person’s daily living. What I mean by this thinking is that changing your hair color over changing careers may be easier to manage. It comes down to how willing we are of the change and was it even wanted in the first place.

Change can be intimidating and I find that it’s easier said than done when someone else tells you to be strong and move on. Believe it or not, often times those words can have the least helpful impact for a person. It can be almost to the equivalent of telling someone who is deeply hurt by divorce to get over it and find a new spouse. That’s how damaging words can be for a person going through an unwanted change.  The truth is that many people struggle when going through it, and it doesn’t mean that the person is changing. Rather their circumstances have and it can be devastating if it’s not expected.

Taking small changes can be easier to handle, but there are some changes that instill fear. It’s difficult going a transition of the unknown. Change doesn’t guarantee that the best outcome will be readily available. It’s like telling yourself that getting out of that bad relationship is for the best. You are okay with it for a few days before starting to wonder if you made the right decision. This is what change can do to a person.

Change is a lot like riding a bike. It’s a scary process that is filled with a lot of emotions, but over time you can see just how amazing those changes are for you. It’s difficult at first and even more difficult to stick to because it is uncomfortable. Change makes you have to push yourself and make your body move in ways it doesn’t normally work. However, if you stick to it and take the time to teach yourself, you become more comfortable, and then it sticks with you forever.

After experiencing multiple changes now, I’m being put in a place where I have no control over the decisions that have been made. I know how hard change. What is meant to be will be, as you become a stronger version of the person you want to be. You will know when the time is right to accept change. When you do, it will mean taking that chance and learning how to ride that bike again.

Living by Possibilities, Not Guarantees

One of the hardest things that I found is not being able to have control over everything in life. It’s not the circumstances that get to me, but people and their actions that tends to be the hardest. There is that fear that by losing control, than something bad could happen. A bad review, an argument, or not getting the relationships that you want in life. No matter what it is, it’s never easy to get past a loss of control. I believe in having faith, and for me this is what has helped to get through those moments. However, there was a time when anxiety was too great. There was a constant heightened state of fear that seemed to overcome every emotion. Perhaps it was because I had a need to have certainty in an unpredictable world. Or better yet, it was an unrealistic demand that was created because of anxiety. 

If you were like me, than you thought that you had to accurately predict and manage the future, not just have some probabilistic and uncertain handle on it. The hope that every, or at least most circumstances and relationships, would be close to perfection. This is how the roller coaster ride of not having control begins and it doesn’t stop until you have certainty. It took years to figure out that we all have the power, the power to let go of the fear of uncertainty through our attitude. We can control how we react to circumstances. We can have hopes, wishes, and preferences that are able to be controlled. You can indeed try to get the approval of others, or to change the course of the future in this or that way. You can also prefer that you succeed.  And you can make reasonable judgments about the future.

If you are someone who has to have certainty, it’s difficulty to get past the fear. Tranquility is not an option unless you let it be. Changes in life bring uncertainty, but we can live with uncertainty and loss of control by gaining courage. It means accepting ourselves as being imperfect and to allow ourselves to make mistakes, even in our relationships. It means having serenity if we face the uncertainty of the future with courage.  This means refusing to cave to the fear of uncertainty.  This means forcing yourself to walk away from your rumination and worry and to do something constructive with your life.  It means having the courage to accept yourself as inherently flawed; as part of a universe that offers no guarantees, and as a being that lives imperfectly in this imperfect universe. 

A friend of mine once said to me, expect the worst and hope for the best. She was right in that thinking. You can never be disappointed when using this thinking. It allows us to live according to what is meant to be, will be. It’s living by possibilities instead of by guarantees.