best practices

5/8/2025

When our son was 10, he announced that he wanted to switch schools. Our township at the time allowed for this and we were okay with it.

The mother of a friend of our son’s heard the news and said that she knew some people whose kid had done the same thing/same school and did I want to know their experience?

I declined. No, I did not want to know. I knew he was not in danger and I wanted my kid to have his experience - pure and undiluted by someone else’s ideas.

Several years before this I was the executive director for that same township’s educational foundation. The main objective was to raise funds to support the kids.

One day, I was so happy as I had just secured a $300,000 gift for one of the high school programs. One of the other local township foundation directors heard about it. She was curious and asked me how I did it.

I had been in contact with one of the donor’s good friends from high school who encouraged me to just send an email. So I did. She was shocked and said, that’s not best practice!

Just the other day, my husband had a friend over to help her with her taxes. She was here awhile and as she was leaving I happened to be around and she said, thank you for allowing your husband the time away from you.

I assured her that in no way do I dictate my husband’s schedule or time. Further, I shared with her that I used to think that’s what love and being a couple was - keeping track of the other person. It’s not.

What these seemingly unrelated very short stories have in common is 1) the *idea* that someone else had about something I was doing and 2) that their *idea* did not apply to me.

For years I took other people’s ideas about living and applied them as my own. This self abandonment only brought misery. It did not feel good to we wear other people’s ideas and expectations as my own.

If you hear nothing else from this Blissing today, HEAR THIS: You BEing you, even if it is disruptive to others, is what heals.

Keep BEing ALL of YOU. It is a game changer.

xoxoxo