My girl Meg, the mother, wife, and babe fox in this series is also a fellow creative. 
 
I asked if I could weave deeply personal lessons learned into her family portraits, and she told me to let it rip. 
 
So here is this gorgeous, growing family…aaaand some lessons from my first ego death.

I started practicing kindness once I studied the philosophy on the laws of attraction.

Truthfully, the idea started in pure selfishness. I was so tired of dealing with liars and manipulative people. Then I realized I was freaking one of the worst of them. So I started purging all that rot.

I started being nice when I didn’t want to. I started controlling my temper. I resisted the urge to go for the jugular. I stopped lying. To you, and to myself. Truthfully, my hand was forced into lying at a really young age. I thought literally everyone was lying to survive. So I started lying to survive, and then I started lying for myself. For my benefit, or to get myself out of trouble. No. Bueno. Guys.

This freaking sucked at first. I was so embarrassed for how i acted for the first threeeeeee decadessss of my lifeeeeee. I slowly forgave myself for my delusion and I started unlearning my worst habit. Then I started earning back the trust and respect of the people I love the most.

I truly thought everyone was relentlessly lying, I am so sorry.

But then my life started getting more pleasant, kinder strangers, better interactions with customer service, people going above and beyond for me.

And in big ways but also literally:  my coffee is better if I’m authentically nice to the barista. The server remembers my order because I stand out because most people were dicks that day. They want it to be good because they made their life better that day too. Now apply this in every freaking direction. Helping people in crisis even if I don’t “feel like it” turned into a reflex. I sense something’s wrong and I offer help even if it is uncomfortable or might make me late. 

Quick and hilarious palate cleanser:

This is how literally everyone who has ever held a crying baby feels inside:

I praise people when they do the right thing, even if it’s not the comfortable thing.
 
However, I’m choosing my own comfort over someone else’s, if the reason is to protect one of my sacred values.
 
I watched this episode of Netflix’s “Explained: The Mind” and learned that when one of your sacred values is threatened, the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex which is responsible for your self control and deliberation goes offline.
 
Reread that. Isn’t that crazy?
 
So this explains why if someone takes a shot at someone we deeply love or a belief that we would die for, we can go ballistic. Our self control legit is not available for comment. 
 
But guess what stays online? Your Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex. Which in short is responsible for our emotions and social judgements.
 
So when someone attacks the most important things to you, your self control checks out and all that’s left is your emotions and social judgments.
 
This is a biological reason why my eyes turn to black and I attack like a cornered rabid raccoon when I feel threatened. 
 
It’s why I have hurt so many people for accidentally trampling on one of sacred values.
 
And even if someone attacks one of my values intentionally, there are usually better ways of handling myself in these situations. 
 
So I got to work on coping; knowing
when my self control just signed out and my highly emotional self just took the wheel.
 
I learned what my sacred values are, and prepared for when someone might threaten one of them (intentionally, or accidentally).
 
I do my best to compose myself before I proceed. I do not always nail it but I’d say it’s improving. As a result I’m happier and getting into a lot less conflicts and taken the rage from a bonfire to a strike of a match. 
But here is the thing: it’s a two-way street. If someone is lying to me, I can feel it all over my body. My intuition is screaming, because lying was once my language. I am learning how the heck to handle this.
 
Some people, who relentlessly lie to me because, to be fair, I lied to them, they’re falling off. We just don’t speak the same language anymore.
 
I miss the people I lied to who rightfully bailed. I respect why they took the door, and would love to own my BS if you need me to. But if the truth might hurt, consider that before asking. My face literally freezes when someone wants me to accept or give a lie. I malfunction now.
 
Please don’t make me malfunction. I refuse to lie, so I’ll just freeze and hope to disappear instead. I don’t want that. 

Telling the truth is so much easier than weaving a lie. I literally have more energy when I’m living with integrity.  

I’m taking that free energy and applying it to things like making new friends who are straightforward with me. Because it’s counterproductive to lie to one another. It’s literally just gonna confuse us both. It’s not just a moral thing for me.

Plus, it takes so much less energy to know someone is shooting it to you straight, and I don’t need to pick through their words and expressions for the truth. 

Also, notice how often I say easy? I hate the hard way. Ease is a massive motivator for me, so if being nice and honest means ease, sign me up. 

We might only get one life and I’m making it as good as possible for me and everyone in my orbit. And if I find a flaw I work it out to keep making things better.

Okay before I wrap up lemme share some important notes:

My buddy Brock/new big brother in town colored me a picture of a ghost panda. It’s as good and confusing as it sounds.

He also got really good air for his flying photos, and didn’t even get hurt. Special thanks to his uncle for the catch. 

Meg lemme know when you’re ready to leave those boys in the dust for a night and have fun with me… <3