Maya Angelou Wrote
- Jun 14, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 17, 2024
Written by: Carole Sanek, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Maya Angelou wrote, “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
Normal, as someone cleverly said, is a setting on the dryer. Who is normal? What is normal?
Is it normal what our parents wanted us to be as we grew up? I remember when my mother would ask, “why can’t you be like so and so, look how normally she behaves.” Yeah, right, mom, f-you mom was the unsaid phrase in my head.
Then we are told we need to adjust to the new normal. So what is wrong with the old normal?
Wikipedia defines the new normal as a state to which an economy, society, etc., settle following a crisis when this differs from the situation that prevailed prior to the start of the crisis.
I read that and realize this has been a constant in our lives. We just didn’t have a cool name for it. Crisis happens. I guess asking did that happen before the crisis or after the crisis isn’t considered appropriate because then should we be putting the words new and old in front of the word crisis? There will always be a new crisis.
In taking a look back in time, I am amazed. I, personally, did not have a nervous breakdown in all that has happened over the years. There are a lot of different crisis moments in my life, yet I adapted, and I moved forward.
Change is the only constant in life, was what Heraclitus said. Plato went on to say, “Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river.”
Plato was brilliant when he assimilated his thoughts that way because we can not step twice into the same river.
We like routine in our lives. We like having control, however in a nano-second, everything can change, everything will change, and then we hear the words new normal.
I practice mindfulness. I talk about it when I live stream on Facebook, and I talk about it often in my daily podcasts.
Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you are sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment.
I practice this concept as often as I can because I don’t want to think that I am bouncing from side to side in a state of new normalcy.
It is going to change anyway.
Carole Sanek, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Carole L. Sanek is a certified life coach specializing in personal coaching, with her specialty being working in grief. Carole is also an author, and her first book, “Fractured – Living with Grief,” launched 1/19/2021 and is available on amazon.com. Carole is especially excited that even though she was diagnosed 27 years ago with breast cancer, she wiped that slate clean and thrived on in her life. Reaching Carole is easy as she believes in transparency and authenticity and welcomes people to reach out to her. In addition, she has a new daily micro-podcast called ThriveLive Zone Daily that can be found wherever you get your podcasts or on your Alexa device under flash briefings.
