It is What It is?

I have never liked the statement "It is what it is". To me it sounds pat, like the oh too familiar, "Whatever." "It is what it is" sounds like there's only one way "it" is. That is never the case. Every situation has multiple facets in many colors and an infinite number of ways to look at it. Perception changes everything does it not?

I learned about perception when I recognized that my sister had a happy childhood and I did not! We came from the same famn damily! That's when I started to notice the different stories she and I told. When I started telling better stories, I had a happier childhood! Imagine that! Not that things in the past have changed, but seeing it all from a different perspective, shifts not only my memories of it but the way it feels.

This was an incredible awakening in my life -- to know that even my past can feel better when I consciously focus on what's good about it. Focusing on the good in whatever happened within and around me became a daily practice when I "took it on the road" in 99. I toured the country for 12 1/2 years. It felt like a lifetime of conscious practice in positive perception. So when I was diagnosed with stage 3C ovarian cancer in 2012, I got to REALLY practice this. 

I talk at length about how I had fun with cancer and how having fun helped me heal from three cAnswer (my way of spelling cancer) occurrences and 36 chemotherapy treatments in my new book, Holy Shift! Everything's a Gift! Suffice it to say that I have come to know that how I see something changes it dramatically. 

A shift of perspective is indeed a Holy shift as it is up to me to choose to see it differently in the first place. I use a sentence from A Course in Miracles, "Show me a different way to see this." Then I breathe, open, listen and allow. It's amazing how, by reframing and renaming what most people think of as terrible, traumatic, poison and deadly, even cAnswer and Chemo/Dreamo can be filled with love, laughter, sweetness and fun and that it matters!

This sentence "It is what it is" had just become a popular cultural declaration when my sister and I had an opportunity to drive together to a singing engagement. I brought it up in conversation. "You know I really don't like the sentence "It is what it is" and told her what I described above.

She asked "What would you rather we say?"

"It is what I make it." The window was open and she didn't hear me correctly.

"What did you say?" she asked.

I repeated myself. She still didn't hear me. I told her to roll up her window. When I repeated it a third time, she started laughing. "What did you think I said?" I asked incredulously.

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She replied, "I thought you said, 'It is when I'm naked,' both times! I was trying to figure out that if it IS when I'm naked, then it's NOT when I am clothed?"

By then I was in hysterics too. Laughter is such a wonderful thing! It helps me shift my perspective as does singing, dancing and meditating. 

It IS what I MAKE it! What a great thing to know! 

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