“The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you - and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.”― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
And without further ado! Let us begin!!! I love beginnings. They are often full of wonder and potential. I have been working so hard to get here; to just begin. It’s been a few years. Since July 4, 2017 to be exact. That’s when I started the Facebook page for The Perfect Lemonade. And then life happened, and more life happened and there was a wedding and holidays, and family illness and more emergencies. You name it. Finally, almost 2 years later I picked a day and decided that no matter what I would begin. See, I was waiting for the right time. When there was nothing pending, and I felt great. When my stomach was flatter, and the moon was sitting just right. Anything. But there is no perfect time.
Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art calls this force that prevents us from creating, Resistance. Ironically, today I have had an awful sinus/ear infection and I haven’t slept in almost 2 days. It’s after 3:30pm and I’m still editing. But darn it I’ve begun!
After I set a date in March, but something came up, and I set another date in April, and there was just more even messier mess. I started to realize that this was indeed a battle. After missing the dates that I… set… for… myself; I realized that sometimes you must push through and know that the Universe has got your back.
“Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a high station morally, ethically, or spiritually.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
And that’s what The Perfect Lemonade is about. It’s not about lemons, lemonade, or Beyoncé. I do admire her, but this idea is about something that I have carried for even longer than 2017. So, briefly, the beginning…
About 10 years ago, I was getting pummeled by life. I had become bitter and very sad. I had no joy. I was chronically unhappy, and I was nowhere near resilient. Life was a constant recovery from shit storms.
I felt ashamed writing that today. So ashamed that I almost immediately rephrased it to make it pretty. It was also during this dark time that I reached my limit of crap and realized that I needed therapy. As I began to get rid of my “stinkin thinkin” as my therapist called it I joined Twitter. While trying to think of a cool Twitter handle and thinking about life. I came to the realization that life really isn’t all bad or all good. Sh@t happens. Balance…bitter and sweet; BOOM! The Perfect Lemonade.
It was also during this time that I realized that there was no storm. My life was expressing externally all the turmoil that I had on the inside. As I began to clear my head it became about working towards having balance. At the end of the day I had no one to blame for my choices. I had to do better. Period.
Difficult times build character and emotional strength. And If we’re really paying attention we become more emotionally intelligent as well. All our hard days can be seen as the lessons they are and become tools to assist us as we work towards getting back to our joy and happiness and learning resilience for the next thing to come. And there will always be a next thing.
Our lives are the sum of both our good and bad days. The hope is that we do better with the days ahead and that our lives eventually become a seamless mix of bitter and sweet.
Using the word perfect can be misleading. Overcoming life’s adversities is not easy and there is not a “perfect” way to live. Whatever our struggle, our lives CAN be lived with purpose. We can find our deeper meaning and we can begin living our lives with balance. And that is what the perfect lemonade is about.
The Perfect Lemonade is a blog, podcast and clothing brand about obtaining and maintaining joy, happiness and resilience. We all have a story. We owe it to ourselves and each other to share them. The Perfect Lemonade Group is a place to share our unique stories about how we have found our joy and happiness and learned resilience. Follow me on Follow me on Instagram for daily inspirational post and updates.
There's no lemon so sour that you can't make something resembling lemonade.-This Is Us