Black Zen And The Weekly Wellness

As much as we try to stay in the present while enjoying the holiday season, we can't help but think back to the goals we set at the beginning of the year. If you made New Year's resolutions and still have a few (or all!) of them left to achieve, don't worry. We’re using this last Weekly Wellness of our year (Reminder: Your Black Zen team goes on a wellness break for the full month of December) to help you make that last, mad dash to finish what you set out to do. This week we're giving you the tools to make those changes stick, and for good this time…

It’s that time of year when your BZ team prepares for its annual December break. This is when we re-center, re-charge and practice personal wellness just as we encourage you to do each week. Don’t worry, we’re not gonna leave you hangin! This week and next week, we’re providing you with a wealth of useful tips and helpful life hacks to dig into while we’re away. There were so many lessons learned this year from the Weekly Wellness archives that we decided to pick out a few of our favorites...

Usually when we hear the word success, we think wealth, perfect relationships, professional accomplishments, and essentially, all the typical outward examples of doing well. But the truth is that once accomplished, those ideal circumstances will only amplify the characteristics of our inner self. It's for these reasons we’re proposing a new definition of “success.” If you don't have peace and joy throughout life, how successful can you really be? If you haven't developed a deep, inner compass of integrity and solidness, how successful will you feel if struck with hardships or when the outward measures of achievement potentially change? If our inner lives are not growing, are not prioritized, and are left unfulfilled, then no matter how much we accumulate - it will never be enough…

Have you ever had a day where everything and everybody seemed to be working on your last good nerve? Maybe it's not even a person, but a situation that just brings on a rant as to why this [insert annoyance here] is so horrible and completely unraveling your peace. I did this a lot when I was a kid. My family can attest that my nickname was Stacey Complain Johnson. You name it, it annoyed me. My grandma would listen intently to these rants and add an occasional "No she didn't?!" At the end of the conversation she would say, "But what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?" For those who have never heard this saying before, there are layers of meaning to unwrap here. Let's just look at the top three...

For the longest time, there was one card game I could never seem to win. One day, I finally realized it was possible to win by playing each hand I was dealt (good or bad), really really well! I started to play with strategy, patience, and stopped taking every bad hand as a sign that that would be my position forever. It turns out I had a wild card - my ability to make decisions as best I could from the position I was in. Slowly but surely, I started to work my way up from the bottom. Even now, I still think of life very much like this game. To steal a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson, "Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."…

Maybe it’s just me, but as soon as I hear the days are about to get shorter all I can think is…winter is coming! It’s a time when I usually stay in the house more often than not, and end up sitting with my thoughts for far too long. It’s no wonder that so many of us can get trapped in a loop of negative thinking and may even be affected by the darker days of daylight savings time being gone. And while a meditation practice can definitely help keep the SAD’s at bay (Seasonal Affective Disorder – a.k.a. winter blues), I’ve now learned the importance of making sure I get ahead of the curve. With that in mind, this week’s wellness is all about how to keep our spirits lifted, our mood bright, and most of all, our mindset in the best possible place to ensure this winter is one that we enjoy rather than dread…

One of our favorite movies from the 80's is Trading Places. For those who have never seen it (I'm looking at you millennials), Billy Ray Valentine (hilariously played by Eddie Murphy, and btw, best movie name ever) is plucked off the street and made into a stock broker on a bet that anyone can do the job if given the right circumstances. What's so great about this story is the transformation of Eddie Murphy's character. He had these skills in him all along, and the only difference maker in this new scenario is confidence. That is what makes all the difference in how he navigates his circumstances...

I remember waking up on my 31st birthday and realizing I hadn't done a thing on my bucket list. While I had the means (despite my early twenties spending habits!) and the opportunity (free time and no present obligations), I was still waiting to do so many things in life because I had expected to be doing them with someone else. I always wanted to travel, but thought the stories wouldn't be the same without a partner to share in the experience. I'd often thought about going back to school but instead chose to keep my schedule open for building a family, despite being single and having ZERO prospects. And the craziest of these, putting off visiting the Grand Canyon because I thought it would be more fun to go as a camping trip with my future kids (and yes, I've already picked out their names). It occurred to me on that particular birthday that I was making life decisions based on future wants, and that the fantasy of my future was cock-blocking my present!...

This week reminded me of a story my dad told us when we were younger (some of you preacher’s kids may have already heard this one). A man finds himself in the middle of a storm (yes, the eye of the storm represents life's muck). The storm just doesn’t seem to let up and eventually becomes a full-fledged flood. Our man finds his way to safety on top of his roof. He thanks God for keeping him safe in spite of all the destruction around him, and asks God to come down and rescue him from the chaos. Soon after his prayer, a raft floats nearby. It’s stable and water tight, but our stranded man reminds himself that God saved him from the storm and he knows that God will surely rescue him from the rooftop as well. He sighed as the raft passed and continued to wait on the Lord. The water around him began to rise and he quickly found himself in knee-deep water… I’ve seen so many examples of this in real life and I imagine that’s why I remember the story so well. How many opportunities for advancement have passed us by

Have you ever been dead wrong about something, but swore up and down it was true? This week I found myself lost in these city streets with nothing but the strong conviction that I was right, and my pride. After realizing we actually passed the same park thrice, my ego had me thinking they must’ve added a new freeway exit. (Really? A new exit? C’mon now.) So convinced that I was right, I wouldn’t let up and course correct - despite all of the evidence telling me to do so. As absurd as this was, how often have similar situations come up in our personal and professional life? How many times has our ego convinced us we were right, when the circumstances and evidence were all urging us to think again? If we believe we know everything, then it means we’ve stopped being teachable. Our ability to heed wise counsel or even accept help becomes compromised, and in doing so, we’ve unknowingly stopped our forward progress…

Sometimes, all it takes is one Fox news story or an ignorant tweet to rock our peaceful boat. That was the BZ Team experience this week that led to this Monday's all-too-important topic… how to protect your peace and guard your energy from emotional and media vampires. Are we being dramatic with the use of the word "vampire"? Perhaps, but let me tell you, the draining of energy is real! Like all responsible adults, we want to know what's going on in the world around us, but this week the news just had to be turned off. It got us thinking, “How do we maintain our peace while still being active members of society?” In this week’s wellness, we provide a few key ways to maintain our energy and guard our joy in the midst of these tumultuous times…

Sometimes we can get so caught up in making sure that we're focusing on the parts of our life that we want to see movement in, that we can easily neglect other areas that need attention as well. I liken this to a relationship where you both know something is wrong, but no one wants to say anything. The unspoken issue between the two of you doesn't mean the relationship is fine, it just means it's deteriorating at a slower rate. So the question is, what are we ignoring in our life right now or what's gone unspoken and might be withering away without our attention…

The competitive nature of us as people is to do what people say can’t be done and excel in areas we’re not supposed to.  And doesn’t every epic movie trailer start out that way? The down and out cop contemplates leaving the force, but then ends up taking down the cartel in a blaze of bullets and pyrotechnics. The woman who can’t find love until the unexpected happens, and now she’s living on a farm in bliss with thirty children and her soul mate. You get the idea. We all love a good “started from the bottom, now we’re here” tale. It’s no wonder that sometimes we seek this level of drama in our own life. But what I’ve noticed over the years, these stories are better on screen. Struggling and grit builds character, sure. I’m good on those. In a nod to Maxine Waters, I am reclaiming the plot lines to my story...

With the NFL pre-season just about wrapped up, it's time for our annual family fantasy football league to begin. In scouring the internet to get tips on how to ensure I set up my team for the win, it got me thinking about how each player has a position to play. Depending on your current situation, which player you are might just determine your next best move...

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? For you Westworld fans, you've heard this question many times throughout the series. While the humans in the story are base and uninteresting, it's the hosts that ponder their existence and question their programming. And it's these higher thoughts that make them more human, almost more so, than the programmers and park guests. So much happens in season one, I can't even! But that's the inspiration behind this week's wellness….Are we all just hosts? Similar to people, the hosts are coded to behave in a certain way. They are given memories and loops of dialogue and characteristics that make-up who they are. Once we begin recognizing that we’re on a loop in our life, we can start to hack our own internal code. We can begin fixing the glitches in our thinking that hold us back from living amazing lives. We can throw out old lines of code that are no longer useful. Most of all, we can begin writing new narratives that lead us to our best life…

Last week was all about discovering our superpower, but in any good hero movie there is always a sidekick. It’s the teammate that quietly kicks butt in the background and helps the superhero complete their mission. For us, that sidekick is meditation. In a world full of noise, both literally and figuratively, sometimes silence is the most powerful tool at our disposal. This silence helps us to find stillness amidst our busy lives and provides refuge from all the nonsense happening in the world around us. It even reveals the areas of our life that need attention (and maybe even our superpower). This week’s wellness is full of tips, tricks and things to remember as you start or navigate your own meditation practice…

We've all had times when we thought we'd never recover or bounce back only to return stronger than before and triumph over setbacks or adversity. How many times have we surprised ourselves with our superstrength or discovered a powerful quality we didn't know we had until a particular circumstance in our life drew it out? Unlike the movies where the superpower is something unhuman, in real life our gifts look like those innate, impressive qualities we all possess. When harnessed, they yield amazing results or mind-blowing outcomes. What's even better, we all have more than one superpower. Do you know what your superpowers are, and if so, are you using them to their highest potential...

I recently attended a 4th of July event that ended in fireworks and it was life changing! I’ll tell you why. If you’ve ever believed you had a good time watching fireworks, try watching a kid watching fireworks. The way that child literally gasped and became awestruck by the seemingly simple bright lights in the sky is a feeling worth hanging onto, even as we get older. It was so clear in that moment that while I was simply seeing a fancy light show, that kid was having a truly joyful experience. And isn’t that what being present is all about? As adults, our joyful moments may look a bit more subdued than the kid watching fireworks, but it doesn’t mean our experience has to be any less exciting or special…

Being raised in a large city, I always fantasized about life in the country. More specifically, I admired folks who were able to live off the land and make their own food. So like any adventurous urban farmer, I tried my hand at growing something simple like tomatoes or mint. They didn't last long (turns out, I don't have a green thumb). However, that experience did get me thinking about how many times we plant seeds that will flower as results in our life, but then don't take proper care of them to make sure they succeed. These seeds can represent our career goals, life ambitions, a romantic relationship, or our personal growth in general. Regardless of the type of "plant" we wish to produce, those seeds don't get far unless we give them the best opportunity to grow…

Let's be honest - we all want to be successful. That's why we get up day after day and work as hard as we do. No matter the type of job we have, whether that's blue collar, white collar, member of the gig economy and everything in between, we all want to feel like we've accomplished what we set out to do. The moment we decide we're going to slay, it's time to put action behind that sentiment. This is what separates those who succeed vs. those who wish to succeed. And while each of our versions of success will look different, the traits of a boss are still the same…