Monthly Archives: April 2010

What’s your recipe?

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I woke up one morning last week, after a night of pulling up nails from our old oak floors in our new/old house and after what seemed like a hangover of never ending To-Dos, to a phone call from my sister. (If you’re new here, you can read about my sister here and here.)

We talked about things… for an hour. I woke up sick sick sick as a dog that day (still am sick.. lost my voice) and so I couldn’t talk much. Good thing. My sister had a lot to say.

We talked about some of the goals I’ve had on my plate for a while – that I’ve been peppering with ideas and seasoning with my enthusiasm for wanting more out of my life (both a curse and a blessing, by the way). My sister has a way of putting things into perspective for me when I’ve been running through a fog for a while. My life has been busy, and I’m not even saying that to sound important or anything. I mean it.

Between Yoga in Motion, the renos, the move and a host of courses and commitment and Rob’s live gigs, even breathing has had to be scheduled. Oh ya, and work. That takes up more than 40 hours of my week, not to mention the time I spend thinking about work when I’m not even there (don’t judge me… you’ve done it, too). Side note:  If you added up all the time you spend at work, then thinking about work and, in some cases, even dreaming about work, how much would you really be making an hour? Just saying.

…anyway

So, my sister says to me, “Sandy, you have a recipe for what makes you tick, but I think your ingredients have been off lately, just a bit.” I don’t know about you, but that made sense to me.

Here is what I’ve decided the recipe for ME is:

-Love. I need to feel it in my relationships, my friendships, my yoga, my food, my writing, my ideas, my shoes, my home and even right down to my coffee in the morning. I want to love the things in my life, and I strive to. Being ‘gray’ about the things is not an option. I need to love it.

Love is... being close with my sister, Ashley

-Philanthropy. After the success of Yoga in Motion this past Sunday, I realize even more how valuable helping, connecting and networking with like-minded people is to me. I don’t do my charity work to be a do-gooder. I do it to do some good. I need this in my life.

-Writing. Only this year, after all these years of writing and publishing, do I finally feel like my voice is starting to appear in my work the way it does in my head. And, without the readers of this little ‘ol blog and my commitment to taking writing courses (here and here), I wouldn’t have found my voice quite the same way.

-Leadership. Not bossy, but leader-y (a word?). I love being a champion for change. Call it the Leo in me, call it what my momma taught me, but being a leader feels good and I take it head on, with the good, the bad and the very, very ugly. Being pigeon-holed into ‘following’ or ‘obeying’ isn’t my scene and I don’t do well with that kind of authority. I used to be ashamed of this, but I embrace it now. It’s my main ingredient, by far.

Living with passion is... Rob

-Fitness. One of the items on my List is “Get in the best shape of my life..” Um, ya. I’m in good shape, for the most part, but have been laxed in the weight room the last couple of months. I work (at least for the next two weeks) at the best women’s fitness magazine in the world. So what’s my beef? Rebellion maybe? I dunno. But I realized, especially from my time at the magazine, how much being fit – I mean really being in tune with my body – means to me. It’s my fuel and my sister reminded me about this often forgotten secret ingredient – kinda like that dash nutmeg in pasta sauce. Try it sometime.

-Ideas. I’m what some might call “An Ideas Person”. I spew ‘em, pump ‘em out, but have a hard time following through because of lack of resources or time (excuses!) Having big ideas – even if they fail – is in my DNA and I need to have a place to put them. Making the pieces fit like that just… uh!

philanthropy + yoga = yoga in motion (a photo from April 25, 2010)

-Yoga. The year my mother battled breast cancer, I turned to yoga, as a student as a teacher. In a time when I felt angry and pissed off at the universe for making my mother sick (or so I thought), I found a space to connect with myself from the inside-out. If leadership is my main ingredient, then yoga is the stuff that makes my recipe a little sweeter.

So, combine these ingredients and I get the most authentic version of myself. Take one ingredient away and well, I’m a whole other flavor.

I knew my recipe had been off lately, but I’m starting to put things back on my plate that matter, in equal measure. Hm, turns out that baking isn’t the only thing that requires precision.

That said, this long-winded post, my friends, has been my way to letting you know that, in order to make space on my plate for the things I really want to sink my teeth into, I quit my job today.

(read that again if you must, but it’s true.)

Yes, I quit a great job with great friends and amazing fringe benefits, not to mention several bylines in an international women’s fitness magazine each month. I’ve been to cities around Canada, the US and even Europe only to find the magazine I work for sitting on the news stand and think, ‘wow, how’d I get so lucky?’. Never fails and I don’t take my good fortune for granted. one. bit. But it took that conversation with my sister, when I was too sick to talk so had to listen, to realize that it’s time to spice things up again. It’s time to reinvent my recipe.

Life. Dig in.

So, I really wanna know… what’s in your recipe?

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Things I learned at 29: Getting caught up

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And I don’t mean when you’re falling behind – I mean the stuff that you think puts you ahead but really, truly, leaves you behind with all the rest.

So, who is the rest? Everybody.

Everybody getting caught up in the things that add up to nothing:

-Getting pissed off in traffic;
-Working a job you hate but convince yourself is necessary to have (because you never really give yourself the credit to do the things you want);
-Caring about rising mortgage rates or buying in a high market;
-Feeling like your friends are always ahead of you in life;
-Caring that the clerk at the gas station ‘ripped you off’ 10 cents;
-Giving into gossip that happens at every family dinner or around the water cooler at work;
-Going out of your way to a ‘Red Tag Sale’ on things that you really don’t need or will rarely ever use, but you buy anyway. Just because;
-Planning your wedding according to what everyone else wants and feeling like you don’t even want that day to come anymore;
-Giving a shit for longer than five minutes how rude your boss was to you in a meeting (get over it, they sure did);
-Drooling over the lives of celebrities who will never know who you are, or care, and who are likely more insecure than you are on any given day;
-Hating the state of your life, but not bothering to do anything about it.

These are the things that we get caught up in, but will surely lead us nowhere. We’re all guilty of it (oh, oh me!) and now it’s time to turn. it. off.

On the List of Things I Learned At 29, don’t get caught up in things that don’t propel me forward is up there. Way, way up there.

How about you?

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Things I learned at 29: get loud

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In four months, less one day, I will be 30 and this blog will have completed its one-year mission to document my “reinvention”, as it were, as I cross everything off of my Birthday List. But if you’ve been here before, you already know that… so why do I keep repeating myself? Good question.

Reaffirmation. That’s why. And even though this post is yet another installment of “Things I learned at 29″, truth is that I learned this little lesson back in second grade.

I try to keep in mind to never underestimate the power of saying things out loud – eventually you will believe what you say.

The good news is that this idea applies to reminding myself of things like why I write my blog each week, because Lord knows I’ve asked myself “why?” a thousand times, especially on days when it’s hard to read back my reflections. The bad news is that this speak-out-loud theory also applies to bad shit happening, too.

I used to tell myself that certain superiors in my life hated me. At first it started out as a joke like, “Oh, so and so haaaates me!” I would laugh about it with my coworkers and friends, but then I started to believe it. And then, I started to react to what I had convinced myself to believe. And even though thinking this person disliked me was sprouted from some truth and experience (let’s just say I wasn’t on this person’s Favorite People of All Time list’) just saying it out loud – that someone HATED me – started to wear down my self confidence.

Some days it caused me so much stress I thought I’d lose my mind.

It was my sister, Ashley, who turned to me one day – after hearing me say “So and so haaates me” over and over – and said, “You would never tell me that someone hates me over and over, would you?” My answer was an obvious, “No”. Why would I ever want my sister – someone I love so much -  to ever feel hated?

Exactly.

Since then, I’ve never underestimated the power of saying things out loud and I kinda wanted to remind you of the same thing, because you probably learned it in second grade, too:

I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN, I THINK CAN…

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Something I really, really have been meaning to share for a while now.

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In 2002, I thought my mother was going to die.

She was diagnosed with stage3 breast cancer. There are only four stages a patient can go through.

I felt incredibly hopeless and lonely during that time in my life and I swore I would change that one day.

And then I did.

Below is a short story about an event called Yoga in Motion that I co-founded with a friend in 2008 – it combines yoga and fundraising and to date we have raised more than $100,000 for breast cancer research and awareness. This is a big part of my life these days, which is why I want to share it with you all, because this blog is a big part of my life, too.

Oh, and I should mention.. in 2005 I wrote, “start a charity” on my Birthday List that year. And it, just three years later, it happened. See? Lists work. Just sayin’.

***

The power of change

By: Sandy Braz, co-founder, Yoga in Motion

My story begins like many others: In a doctor’s office, on the receiving end of a conversation that started with the words, “I’m sorry to say, but…”

My mother was 49 when she learned that she might lose both her breasts and live for another six months, if she was lucky; longer if she took treatment, which she knew nothing about, but once watched a friend receive and surely thought the treatment looked worse than the cancer itself.

For a few minutes that day in the doctor’s office, as the news was delivered to her, she considered foregoing treatment and living out her days with my sister and I by her side, her hair, breasts and body in tact. She considered it, but not for long. My mother wanted to live, and we needed her to.

At the time I was 21 and my sister just 16. We were newly a family of three, the ink on my parents’ divorce papers barely dry. To say it was a difficult time would be an understatement; but to say it was the worse experience of our lives wouldn’t be accurate either. That year, as I watched my mother be pricked and prodded, go bald and lose part of her breast, I learned that, like me, she wanted to live a full and healthy life. She wanted to be there for my graduation the following year; she wanted to celebrate my first home; she wanted to button my dress on my wedding day; and she wanted to kiss her grandchildren goodnight. For the first time in a long time, she regained her will to not just live, but to live well.

Simple pleasures like coffee became a joy; spending time with my sister and I became what she looked forward to, not what was a chore of preparing dinner or doing laundry; and sitting in the passenger’s seat of my car as we drove to and from the hospital every Tuesday and Thursday for treatment became an opportunity to watch her daughter become a strong woman, just like she always hoped I would be.  “I’ve done well,” she once told me, as we pulled into the treatment centre, “and I am so proud of who you have become.” As the breast cancer broke her down, the experience of being loved and cared for helped build her back up because, as we learned that year, it is possible to change how cancer changes you.

By the time my mother was diagnosed, I had been teaching yoga for a couple of years. It helped me help her. Yoga gave me a way to deal with my confusion and sadness and anger towards breast cancer; it gave me an opportunity to heal and change what cancer meant in my life. For all these reasons, and for my mother and sister, I co-founded Yoga in Motion, alongside the compassionate and philanthropic women of the Mount Sinai Auxiliary. It is an event that I hope inspires others to redefine what cancer means in their own lives; it is a way to put themselves in motion for a cure.

Want to help make a change – feel free to RE-BLOG this post or sponsor me here.

2nd Annual Yoga in Motion
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Liberty Grand, Toronto
10am-2pm
yogathon

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