Believing in yourself

We're not born with self confidence. It comes with life experience. And some find it earlier than others.

M. remembers me as that young woman who lacked confidence, and when we first got back together, he'd say things that were clearly meant to build my belief in myself.

It threw me, because if anything, I have an overabundance of confidence and am usually treated that way.

He's rearranged his thinking on that, but I can't fault him; we were apart nearly 30 years. And at some point in that time, I gained my confidence. Probably after I pulled off a move to California, alone, without a job, to a city where I knew no one.

Confidence comes from knowing our accomplishments and acknowledging them to ourselves.

Oh, I can hear you now. Me? What have I done? Nothing!

If we take time to review our life, the accomplishments are there. However minor they may seem at first, if we look at them more impartially, we might see that to others, they may represent climbing a major hill.

If not a mountain.

And maybe that's how we should be seeing them, too.

Confidence comes from realizing how much you've actuallly done and giving yourself the credit you deserve.

Sometimes, we wait for others to give us those kudos. Those words of appreciation. Of admiration. Of acknowledgment.

Don't wait.

You don't need someone else to give you credit. You only need to give it to yourself. Believe in yourself. And the abilities to have gotten this far in life.

It's been my experience that I can build anything on my belief in myself.

And so can you.

Welcome!

Welcome to new visitors from around the world who are dropping in to read Diana's guest post.

Feel free to stay a while today, or drop in again when you have time to visit.

Scroll down for Part 1 of D's inspirational post.

Who am I?

Who am I?

It's a question that comes up for many when they retire from their careers.

And while it isn't a question for me, I realized that I was going to need a writing business card soon.

As in February, when I attend a writers' conference in San Francisco. So I found a great, inexpensive, online source for cool cards and this is the card I picked for the writers' conference.

Yes, that email addy is different and that's because I want one just for writing, AOL is too dated, and ok, I admit it, embarassing, to use professionally, and I may be the only person in the world with a gmail account who doesn't think gmail is the greatest thing since sliced bread. So I'll use ymail for business only.

But I might take some select consulting work from California later next year. So I wanted something that looked more business-y. I probably should've left the title blank, because it might not be that kind of work. But it's telling that I chose to retain that identity.

Because, after all, that is who I am.

Too much stuff

Doesn't this look inviting? My fellow blogger, Laura, over at Lolalina.com posted it today, along with a great piece about clutter and simplicity.

As I get older, I have less patience with living in clutter. In fact, my Tampa house used to be pretty much this open and cleared out.

Then I moved a lot of stuff from California this year. Stuff that didn't fit in the storage unit here and really, was too much for this little house.

It's stressful to live with too much stuff. I aspire to make our new living place this simple and clean. Of course, with four dogs and a cat, it'll be more a goal than perfection. But I believe it's do-able.

First, I have to be brutal about discarding stuff that's no longer useful.

And, we have to have a big enough place for our entire family. That's critical.

Finally, my sister-in-law is a professional organizer. She helped me pack up when I thought I was moving to California last year. She is brutal about pruning, but tactful. Plus I love her! She's offered to fly out and organize us when we move and I'm going to take her up on it. She just offered again this week.

Soon as we have a date the goods will arrive, I'm getting her a ticket.

The courage to change ~ part one

My friend, Diana Baur,is the proprietress of Baur B&B in the Piedmonte section of Italy. Diana and her husband, Micha, moved to Italy some six years ago to restore this old property and open it to guests.

It takes courage to make this kind of change at mid-life. I’ve asked Diana to share her story in a guest blog post.

Over the next two days, you’ll read a little about Diana’s story. And what it takes to make a life change this huge. Here’s Diana:

The Power of the Backpack
There was once a woman whose life had brought her a foreign place where she knew no one. She had everything she ever held dear in her backpack.

When she got to the desert, she started to cross the sand. After a few steps, she could see an oasis in the distance, and started walking in that direction.

Soon her back was aching to the point where she could not go on. She found shelter near a dune, and decided to stop there and rest overnight, scared to move ahead, scared to move backwards, because with her back hurting so much, both meant certain death.

The thought of living without the treasures in her backpack was unimaginable – they were the experiences that had gotten her thus far in life, and she could not discard them.

In the night, an angel appeared in her dreams, and said one sentence to her.

“Have you forgotten that you have pockets?”

She woke up and immediately began removing the things from her backpack and redistributing them into her pockets, tucking some of them in her socks and shoes, wrapping some of them around her waist. She threw her backpack in the sand, and with new Energy, reached the oasis by sunrise with a bounce in her step where she drank from the fountain of Life.

It is somewhere around mid-life that we start an unconscious review of the components of our lives. Things have started causing us pain that before were of no consequence. Relationships, jobs, children, commitments, running around doing/shopping/helping/cleaning have brought us to a point where we are, well, tired. Tired with a Capital T.

And we have the sinking feeling inside that if we continue on this path, the path we set for ourselves in our twenties or thirties or even in our energetic forties, we might not live long enough to apply for Social Security.

When these things happened to me, I was already in a foreign country living an expatriate life. My backpack had been full for a long time. Full of having adjusted to new cultural norms, a new language, a new career as a language and cultural trainer, a new currency, and an old case of corporate burn out which I had buried way down in my back pack and brought with me from the States.

By the time we made the decision to change our lives and become innkeepers in Italy, my back was killing me.

But I kept going. I worked like crazy, like women do everywhere, to make it all happen. But my backpack kept getting in the way of me fully enjoying the process-until one day, when the straps broke, and my life fell down around me on the floor, in all of its parts.

The parts turned out to be quite interesting.

This is Part One of a Diana’s story. For more information about Diana, see her blog at www.creativestructures.blogspot.com. For more on Baur B&B, see www. Baurbb.com. Part Two tomorrow.