By Tiffany Potter
Hello, lovelies.
Welcome to the newest year of our lives and the newest addition to the Community Alliance. This column, my column, will be a regular occurrence and I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am about this new adventure. I hope you meet me here every month to exchange energy, to share experiences, to laugh and to learn from one another. Consider this meeting space as sacred, set aside for just you and I.
All love affairs begin with introductions so I’ll go first:
I tend to say inappropriate things at inappropriate times. I havelearned to consider this part of my charm.
I lose sleep worrying that we as a society, if we keep interacting with each other the way that we do, will self-implode. Our collective consciousness as a society is primarily diseased and that scares me.
I only accept relationships in my life that serve me. Serve my soul. Serve my purpose. Serve my peace of mind. Serve my forward motion.
I understand that dreams take time.
I’m a fierce supporter of women entrepreneurs. Well, all women really, but those that have dared to start their own businesses are not only my soul sisters but in fact own real estate in a small corner of my heart.
I will always root for the underdog.
Genuineness and authenticity reign supreme in my world.
I have run four half marathons to date. Hate running. Love the medals.
I hate camping with a capital “H.” A challenge given that my husband is a bit of a mountain man. We’re still negotiating the terms of that part of our marital agreement. I’m secretly hoping he’ll see what a pain in the ass I think camping really is, and he’s secretly hoping that if he buys me some sort of Airstream that I will concede. I’ll let you know what we figure out.
I am the first in my family to graduate from college; which says nothing about my intelligence and everything about my stubbornness to finish what I start.
Though life took me to San Diego for 13 years, I am a product of the Fresno Unified School District, have lived happily here in the Tower for four years now, and was part of The Music Man at Roger Rocka’s Music Hall back in 1989. (I suppose we always come back to where we start from in some form or fashion, eventually.)
I have an unhealthy love affair with all things handbags.
I make questionable choices when it comes to watching really bad reality television.
No more so than looking in the eyes of an animal do I experience the divine energy and sacred love that connects us all. I long for the day when every one of us understands the value of adopting and rescuing versus buying animals solely because one’s ego thinks them to be of better quality. When will we get it that those that have a “story,” no matter what species, are glorious, and we can learn from them all if we just got out of our own way?
I live and breathe by lists. But I have learned to leave room for the surprises in my life for it is in that space that the magic happens.
I left a piece of my heart in Paris.
My friendships are my life blood.
I’ve killed everything I have ever planted, even cacti. Not for lack of trying, just lack of innate talent I suppose. One summer when I was 10 years old, my neighbor hired me to water their plants while he and his wife were away on vacation. They never employed me again.
My failures and defeats have been as equally plentiful as my success and wins. And I am learning every day to embrace those misses, for we can’t have the hits if we don’t have the misses.
I have had the honor and privilege of being taken through a guided meditation by Deepak Chopra himself. There is not enough gratitude in the universe for this encounter.
And lastly, I was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy that rendered my hands and arms completely immobile, and useless, at birth. Only through hard work, painful work and the support of my mother do I have the use and function of them now. My challenge does not define me, but I would be denying one of the very reasons why I try harder, dig deeper, expect more from myself and can’t stand any trace of pity if I did not honor its place and purpose in my life. It is also the reason why I preach and teach compassion and empathy for all living things. It is my souls calling.
When I think about this column and what my intention for it is, it is this: I am less interested in disseminating information as I am about showing up, being present, asking the hard questions that make one think below the comfortable surface, and then sitting in the silence until you find the courage to meet yourself. I’m not interested in beating you over the head with what you should be thinking or what I believe is important enough for you to know about our physical world. Everything, and I mean everything, we experience can be explored through bigger questions and divine lessons learned as long as we are open and conscious to it. There are a million venues and avenues that are more than willing to jump on the salacious, dramatic, soulfully painful realities of our world today and how we interact with each other. I can’t sleep at night if I am just another one of those talking heads.
My style, my voice, may not be of interest to you; that’s okay, I’m not for everyone. I can be polarizing. I tend to shake things up and speak my mind. If that is of interest to you, fantastic! I look forward to our beautiful relationship that begins here, and begins now. Will what I write change the world? Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not for me to decide. But know that I will provoke you to dig deeper, to get back to your center outside of the “noise” that is our overly social-media’d society. If I challenge you to view your journey in a different light than you ever have before, then I consider this column a win.
It is a risk to be so vulnerable, to show so much of myself in front of a potential firing squad of thousands of opinions. But what I know is this, this is as much my journey, asking myself these questions and delving deep, as I am asking you to do. So let’s dig deep together. Let’s carpool together on this journey taking pit stops along the way to get clear on why we are all really here.
I have a feeling it is going to be one hell of a ride.
Make no mistake; there will be some months that are silly and inconsequential. They won’t change the world and, dare I say, will never be quotable. But if nothing else, in all of its levity, they will remind us not to take ourselves so seriously all of the time.
So hello, my sweet new friends.
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Tiffany Potter is an entrepreneur, inspirational speaker and change agent. Founder and CEO: United Learning Foundation. Contact her at: www.ULFUSA.com or contact.tiffanystake@gmail.com
