It’s absolutely beautiful where I live today. Close to 70 degrees at the beginning of November. It’s one of those days that feels like a priceless treat from Mother Nature that you want to savor and not waste any part of. Normally on a day like today I would be happily hiking through my forest, touching my trees, and listening to the melodies the wind makes as it blows through the tree branches. But.. life had other ideas.

A little less than a week ago while getting off the couch my foot got stuck on the edge of a piece of a carpet tile that was coming up and I ended up severely messing up my left ankle and foot. Yes, from getting off the couch. Trust me, I wish I had a much cooler story or at least was doing something fun/ interesting to cause my injury. I knew when I heard/felt the loud pop in my ankle and I promptly couldn’t put any weight on it that.. Houston, we have a problem. To be honest, I did visit the land of great denial for a while and kept trying to put weight on it and convince myself it wasn’t that bad. I’m in a lovely boot until further notice and while I can weight bear as tolerated I also get the fun of using crutches. If you’ve ever used crutches before, there’s nothing fun about them.. They make getting anywhere feel like an Olympic Sport. So far I know I have severely sprained 3 major ligaments in my foot and ankle. Yes, you read the right, 3 several sprained major ligaments from getting off a couch. I live life by the motto: “Go big or Go home.”

On days like today where its absolutely gorgeous out and the fall colors seem to be hitting their peak it is difficult to trade hiking through the forest for sitting in a lovely backyard, but I am reminded of a phrase I recently learned in my MSBR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Strategies) Class, “Right now its like this.” I can’t take credit for this absolutely genius phrase the credit goes to Vinny Ferraro. Vinny is the super cool dude in the picture at the beginning of the post. It’s a simple phrase, but one I have found incredibly helpful when it comes to accepting things right now that I don’t want to accept. While this 5 word phrase focused on accepting what is, there’s also hope within it because right now isn’t forever. I can’t count the number of times I have repeated this phrase to myself since I heard and felt that loud pop almost a week ago.

Now, this phrase while powerful and helpful is not magic. Are there still moments where I am like fuck this.. absolutely. Are there moments where I wonder what awful acts I did in a past life to cause the journey I’ve been on for the last three years? Yep, there sure are. If you know of anyone who can sage one’s past life or lives, let me know. I clearly did some awful shit that I need to cleanse from myself. Are there moments where I wallow and throw myself a pity party? Yeah, that’s called yesterday. But, in those hard moments I also do my best to remind myself “Right now it’s like this”. It won’t always be like this, but this is where I am right now.

The next time life throws some ridiculous curveball your way or even if you’re just stuck sitting in traffic damming all the cars in front of you to the depths of hell, try repeating to yourself “Right now its like this”. I make no promises that this 5 word phrase will keep you from continuing to dam the cars in front of you to the depths of hell or make the curveball moments of life any easier, but I do think you’ll feel your body relax, your breath deepen, and your soul say “It’s all going to be o.k.” or who knows by the time you get the phrase out the cars in front of you might just start to move.