Thoughts on Living Your life from 2016

As we near the end of 2016 I have a taken a moment to reflect on my learning from this year. My thoughts on being in the world, being you, being love and living your life.

For me, and many of my friends 2016 has been a year of change, a year of letting go and a year of discovering what it means to truly be. It has taught me much about being an artist and storyteller in both visual and verbal worlds; as well as being as an entrepreneur and founder of the social, digital and creative kind.

This year through my studio we have shared our ideas and social learnings with over 280 people in our training sessions, and collaborated on over 18 different client projects. We attended and photographed our 2nd Burning Man, and successfully launched the social initiative Grateful4Her. It was a big year both personally and professionally for Live What You Love, LLC.

So what thoughts have I discerned and discovered or learnings have I been taught? Here are 32 of my thoughts and learnings from 2016; and while I am by no means an expert in their practice, I am grateful for the space and social interactions that have enabled them to occur in my world, so that I may share them here with you.

To my friends of the love, light and magic kind, may you too “Sit in the middle of a dust storm, close your eyes and dream. For it is not the dust that will stop you on your path, it is a lack of dreaming about the possibility of where the path may lead when it becomes clear.”

Being in the World. Burning Man. Photo by LWYLStudio.

Being in the World

1. Always travel. The earth is smaller than we think, and greater in possibility than our eyes in a moment allow us to see. By traveling the world we weave together moments that help us to see further and to think around corners.
2. We are each perfectly different, each and every one of us. Not all peoples who speak the same language are alike or are of the same culture, values or beliefs. It is our differences that make us similar, and our complexities that unite us.
3. Movement is the most important language of the world. For to move is to change, transform and to never move backward; yet to step forward into the future.
4. Strangers are the friends we have not yet met. When handed a glass of iced water in the desert by a stranger, drink it. You may not realize just how thirsty you are or how far in the desert you still have to travel.
5. It is the people who make the politician. So protesting the politician is pointless unless you are also challenging the ideas of the people who believe in them.
6. To write is to find your voice as it travels the world inside you. Your voice is a gift. Cherish it, surround yourself with people who nurture it, and always always share it. Knowing the power of your voice is to be free of thought and expression.
7. Listen to the world around you by making quiet the voice inside you. To support others in how they want to be in the world we have to hear their voice while being present to our own.
8. Lead by asking ‘how can I help?’ before professing to know the way. We all have gifts and ways to share, support and be there for each other and it is in the asking that best serves the sharing of your gift and ideas into the world.

Being You. Steampunk Photo Shoot. Photo by Vanessa VonRouge

Being You

1. Live openly with an open mind. It is with an open mind that we can discover how to change ourselves to be more of our amazing selves than we allow ourselves to be. And we can change ourselves more easily and freely than we often think.
2. Being kind is more important than being right. For the people we discuss and debate with are always more important than the argument, and the relationship more fragile than our beliefs.
3. Crying is a good thing. It is your eyes telling you to listen and not with your ears, with your heart. It is your body telling you that what you are feeling matters and the source of your tears means more than any words could ever express.
4. To be grateful is to breathe. When we forget our gratitude for the world and life around us, we misplace our humanity. For gratitude is a social emotion that can change the world, and more when it is shared and gifted. It is in making our gratitude visible that gives it power and unlocks the possibility of those around us.
5. Always be your authentic, true self. While the world might not always be as we may wish it, within it we must be as we wish to be. For to be happy is to be authentic with who you are on the inside, so that you may give voice to help create the world you wish to live in on the outside.
6. Always be creating and curating life. Take more photographs. Write more words. Paint more pictures. Teach, learn and share. Life is a forever moving social feed curated by our words, pictures and feelings in the present.
7. You will forever be exploring what ‘being you’ truly means for you. No one else can walk in your shoes, even if they borrow them for a time. For then it is just your shoes on another’s feet and it is not the shoes but the feet that walk our life journey.
8. Be you for you can never be another. And you are perfectly imperfect.

Being Love. Burning Man. Photo by LWYLStudio

Being Love

1. Love is an energy that is always best gifted. It coexists between us and is only made visible when enacted, expressed or shared. It is something we do, not something we say.
2. Love fearlessly even if another fears it or cannot return it. It is not love that people fear, but to be loved fearlessly by another with a whole heart. For to be loved powerfully is to be deemed worthy of a gift greater and more special than any other, the gift of a person’s heart. And we are all worthy.
3. To be intelligent is to understand and converse with the heart, more than the head. Intelligence is not a state of being educated or book read. It is to feel the wisdom of the world within your heart as it tells your mind what the head doesn’t hear and rarely understands.
4. It can take only a few words on a postcard to change a life. Write carefully, freely and always from the heart.
5. If it hurts, it matters. Lean into what matters. Always. No matter how much it hurts or who. Lean in to it as a way to move through it.
6. Love in your life is a choice not by chance. Every moment of every day we choose to be our greatest possibility together, or apart. Never forget in every word, act and moment we are making a choice with love.
7. Never act in love, be in it. For to act in love is to commit fraud with another person’s heart and that is stealing.
8. Love, no matter the risk or the reward. For our world needs more of it and in our lives, love defines our life purpose.

On Living Your Life. Burning Man. Photo by LWYLStudio

On Living Your Life

1. Time is the richest social currency in the world. Once spent, used or gifted you can never get it back. Share it wisely and with people who value, support and ignite your way of ‘being you’ in this world.
2. Accept that people do not always get along. That doesn’t mean that these people do not love or care for each other, especially in families. It means they do not know how to be with each another. For friends are the family we choose, family the friends we grow up with, and strangers the friends we’ve not yet met.
3. Listen with your eyes and see with your ears. It will change your life and connect you more with the earth as you hear more of what someone is not telling you.
4. Give more and take less. And especially when it is not reciprocated. For to give is to nurture the invisible ties that connect and grow us and form the foundation of the communities that are us.
5. In the world of tagging, give the gift of the physical. Be it a photograph in a frame or a written letter or postcard sent in the mail, the tangible shows the moments what truly matter with those we love, care and cherish in our worlds.
6. Sit in the middle of a dust storm, close your eyes and dream. It is not the dust that will stop you on your path, it is a lack of dreaming about the possibility of where the path may lead when it becomes clear.
7. Not everything that can be shared should be. With sharing anything ~ a video, photo, comment or an experience comes great responsibility in its sharing with others; for in all we share we are creating stories about ourselves and those who travel with us.
8. Never settle for someone or something. For to settle is to cheat yourself and another from a life lived with the possibility of love of a truly powerful kind.