From the get-go when I learned that I had cancer, I decided it HAD to turn out for my greater good in some way.   It made no sense that something as disrupting as cancer came to only cause me problems.  Maybe this belief was a self-defense mechanism or maybe it was an insight from the Universe.  I think it was probably both - you need something to hold on to and something positive to occupy your mind.  One of my all-time favorite authors, Napoleon Hill, taught that "with every adversity comes with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."  So I have been looking and still am looking for my greater benefits.  That has led me to think about what a successful life for me looks like now.  I believe defining "success" is a human need and striving to achieve the defined success is also a shared condition.  It is more or less a conscious activity depending on the human.  This human has thought about it a lot.  It started out with good grades, running the fastest, looking pretty - that sort of thing.  Then it moved to prove my success by the visible results of my life - an advanced degree, a nice house, a Mercedes in the garage, a Rolex, a prestigious job title and on and on.   I call this stage of my life, "when more was more."  During what was becoming the end of the more is more phase, I relocated back to Montezuma County.  Skip some years and here we are today.  Money, of course, is always involved in success.   It is pretty hard to buy a house without it.  I learned early on that having money is better than not.  I have never been shy about working and have been smart about the work I have chosen to do.  I have almost always been in some sort of sales job so that I can control what I make by how good of a job I do.    I am now slowly realizing that I am not my job or the results of my job.  There are things that I would like to do that have nothing to do with my job(s).  With the HUGE EXCEPTION, that if you don't have income - you are really limited in what you can do.  One of the ways that I am thinking of success these days involves getting a lot smarter about money.    Until one can live a decent life outside the constraints of working in a day-to-day kind of way to earn the money needed, how successful is that??   The cancer experience so far has given me the gift of seeing things in a different light so that I can think differently than I did before.   On a wide variety of topics - money being only one.

I used to think the answer was Time.  I reasoned if you didn't have Time, you didn't have anything.   I now think it is Health.   You could have a lot of Time, but if you are too sick to get up or to eat or to feel good in any way, Time might become an enemy, not a friend.    Time is still a requirement, but Healthy Time is what is important.    Until I had the experience of a lack of health, I took health for granted.  I had always been a "super healthy person."  HA - I was just fooling myself because it took a long time for "lack of health" to catch up to me.  I lived to work and the stress that came with it had become totally normal.  Work came before most everything - eating, sleeping, or any kind of downtime.  Too much stress can kill you.  At some point, something is going to give way - a stroke, a heart attack, or catching cancer.  Funny thing is that the event is really a gift in the form of a "wake up call."   The truth is life is what you make it.  No one has to do anything or in any certain way.   You just need to figure out what is important to you and go about living your life congruent with your values.   I don't think it is possible to live your highest and best life without some space to create.    Stress takes away one's ability to be creative.  

When you find yourself stuck or living what Andi calls the "robot life" it is time to take stock and make some changes before things get worse - maybe Really Worse.   I call the concept "the circle cage."   It means going round and round for a reason that may have once existed but has been long forgotten.   Going around and around has become the goal in itself.   THIS IS NUTS.   It can get comfortable though.   For me, the circle cage was work.   You have to step off or out of the cage to see that there is a whole big world out there once you are no longer caged.   Yes, it will probably be uncomfortable, but "oh, what might there be?" once a person gets free.   I am starting to get to know my creative side again.   As my brain gets a little more rested and a little less full, there becomes room for some really new and exciting options.     On my mother's side, I come from a long line of teachers.   I love to learn.   One of the best ways to learn is to teach.   From my experiences come something educational.   I am excited about teaching some real estate classes starting in early February.  See the Classes and Events tab for more details.  I would love to hear your thoughts on the Circle Cage and all that comes with it.  Text Circle Cage to 970-739-3548 and let me know what you think!

Cancer helps you think about what is important and then actually do something about it.   Taking time to celebrate important things - big and small would go on the list of important things.   January 18 would have been my parents' 73rd Wedding Anniversary - if my mother was still alive.  She's missed two of them so far.   Being married over seventy years is something to celebrate.  Can you imagine being happily married for over 70 years?   I can as I got to witness it first hand.   Growing up, having happily married parents was completely normal for me.   I got divorced after a 20-year marriage so later I learned that a happy marriage is not always "normal."  My divorce made me even more thankful for growing up in a home where it was.    My dad, who is 94, came over and ask me if "today was January 18?"  I instantly knew that I had so far forgotten that it was.   I felt terrible.  He didn't seem too concerned.  I guess when you are 94 you really have a lot of perspective on things as he knows how much I care about my parents.  I had a picture of their wedding day close by.  As we looked at the picture of my young future parents, my dad said, "The day was like today.  Not a lot of snow, sunny but cold.  We stood out in the lawn under the apple tree for that picture."  They were married in Mancos, CO at my grandparent's house.  It was the house in which my mother was born.  I am really lucky to have the family roots I have.  I miss my mother.  The best thing I can do now is to celebrate little things with my Dad.  And, next year, I am not forgetting January 18. 

In the big picture, my acute cancer experience could have been much worse.   I have a dear friend who had eight chemos.   I had three.  I am alive, some people lose their lives.  Talking about perspective here...  However, there are moments in the journey that are really hard.  After about a month of not being able to eat or drink much, I was dehydrated and running pretty thin on endurance.   It didn't really matter that everything tasted like "swamp."  What mattered was getting some kind of food down and then keeping it there.   I clearly remember kind of hanging on to the kitchen counter while the vision of KFC mashed potatoes and gravy floated through my mind.  I was hungry.  My dear Dad was there.  He was worried.  We live 20 miles from Cortez. When I said "I wish I had some KFC mashed potatoes," I was not expecting my dad to say "ok, I'll be right back."   He was out the door.  He was 93 at the time, now he's 94.  It took me a second to realize he was off to get KFC.  About an hour later, he was back.   I ate the whole container of potatoes and gravy.  He also had brought a Dr. Pepper.  A drink came with the meal.   In my normal life, I  rarely if ever, drink pop.  There was so much sugar in the Dr. Pepper it masked the swamp taste. I drank the entire thing.  Not exactly healthy food, but at that stage of the game any food was good food.   It got me through that day.   I had KFC potatoes several more times over the next couple of weeks.  The smooth and the salt were good things.  Thank you, Daddy, for being there when I need you.  You have been and always will be my hero.  LOVE YOU!!!!