Thoughts on Living Your Life from 2019

Breathe in smiles, and breathe out hugs. Big hugs. Hard love. Forever love. Passionate love. The world needs more of it, and we people need to let go and embrace it.

As we open the door to another year and close the windows of a year past, I find myself looking back in order to look forward. Reflecting on the moments of how I lived this last year and why. Drawing out the insights of who I interacted and collaborated with, what I learned and how. What did I gain from the experience and how did I share and give to others during this past year?

“Reflective practice is a process, incorporating a range of different techniques, through which one can acquire a deeper understanding of oneself and one’s interconnections with others and one’s environment.” — — Cheryl Hunt.

Every year I undertake this reflective process. A simple but effective one for learning, letting go, moving forward and learning about the importance of being you in a world forever trying to change you. A process by which during the week between Christmas and New Year, I write down about thirty-two thoughts and learnings from my year. About eight reflective statements on Being in the World, Being You, Being Love, and Living Your Life.

This is a compilation of my thoughts from living my life during 2019.

I am by no means an expert in their practice, yet I am grateful to the people and experiences which have sparked these insights so that I may continue to grow, to learn, and to share them with you here.

❤

Always. Forever. Today.

Being in the World.

Being in the world

1. Be Patient. We all move, think are in different places, spaces, and styles. To create space for another in order to fill it and join you at yours, always be patient.
2. Praise in order to forgive often. Everyone is living and surviving the best way they can along their journey. It takes the kindest words to heal the hardest of situations. Give praise to uplift others and forgive the littles of transgressions.
3. Be grateful for the people who can be where you are unable. We may never be in two places, even if we so want to. Friends, family, and strangers will often fill the void that your absence has created in the world as your presence fills for another.
4. Criticism is the shortest trip to an unhappy state. When others judge, dig deep, hold on and be conscious of the slippery slope where many will follow. Break the moment with a smile, and change the conversation.
5. Attention is not an intention. Be intentional in all you do, all you want and all you are. While some may give you the attention (or you them), it is intentions that of walking alongside each other that will make the difference.
6. Work hard to trust in a world often unable to. To guide you and to support others, create boundaries of the love and compassionate kind, and inject life no matter how much you may want to pull away.
7. Create a tribe and nurture your tribe daily. The world is one of the most beautiful, inspiring yet harshest experiences to live and survive in. A tribe will make the journey magical when you need it most.
8. Love and hug people. In a world of algorithms, hashtags and swiping right know the true importance of human connection.

Being You.

Being you

1. Trust yourself, your decisions and your journey, especially when tested. Know another’s testing of your choices is more about them than it is you. So be strong. Trust you.
2. Talk with heart and listen with conviction. It is not what you say or your tone, that people rally against it is your conviction and your confidence in what you share. A confident voice is one that is most threatening to an uncertain soul.
3. Always move. Run. Swim. Dance. Lift. Ride. Do whatever it is you need to feel wealthy of heart and body, making it a critical part of being you and being moved in your life. A healthy life is one of body, mind, and soul, always moving.
4. Sacrifice you, never. Be if your purpose, your integrity or your wealth know that you matter, you come first and to help and give to the world, you need to look after you first.
5. Love being disruptive. Not everyone will like you for it, and not everyone will understand, yet the only way to be you in the world is to leave a ripple of purpose, passion and of heart.
6. Leave your expectations at the door. The expectations you carry with you, of yourself, of others and the world, will be your unraveling. Let go of what you wish for and live in who you are, on the journey to create the world you know is possible.
7. Sensitivity is your gift and your superpower. Embrace it. Celebrate it. And accept it and protect it when being forced to change it. You are as sensitive as we all are, we just express it differently.
8. Investing in you, always. Your heart, mind, and body. To progress, to move forward to change, investment is critical. Create space and focus.

Being Love.

Being love

1. Breathe in smiles, and breathe out hugs. Big hugs. Hard love. Forever love. Passionate love. The world needs more of it, and we people need to let go and embrace it.
2. Trust is the invisible thread for every heart tie. To love, trust you. Your choices, your heart, and your journey. When you feel you don’t, ask yourself why?
3. Be kind and share your strength. When needed loan someone your strength instead of reminding them of their weakness.
4. Choose YOU every day. No one can choose you until you choose you, and only then, can you see, feel and be with true love in the world around you.
5. Invest in friends of the “Will” kind. Friends who love powerfully while also gently. Like calling 48 friends one day, and 31 the next. Embracing people with their words as well as their arms. Looking out for everyone, in family, in life, and in the dust. Like standing on the front of an art car with a wide smile that both welcomes and remains in everyone’s heart forever.
6. Honor the planetary connectedness between us, the earth and the animals. We must love wholistically, the animals, the planet, the earth as much as we love each other, maybe more. Definitely more.
7. Love through a child’s eyes. Big, wide and filled with so much light and possibility. Children feel the world as they are, not as they want the world to be.
8. Love with the filters swiped off. In the real the raw and in sweat pants. When the arguments are intense, we are imperfect and the space between you feels suffocating. Love then more than anything or anyone for this is when it truly matters.

Living Your Life.

Living your life.

1. Honor your life. Your love, your dreams and all in between. Without your purpose and direction, without your focus and hope, all travelers will be lost forever searching. Always distracted.
2. Dance with asstitude every morning and every night. Call up your favorite dance list and turn up the sound. It will blow the dust, the uncertainty, and the hurt out the window and create an energy field of heart around you.
3. If it is not in writing it doesn’t exist, yet in the air around you. Thank you cards. Love Letters. Postcards. Contracts. Agreements and most importantly, the post-it not on the fridge, the bathroom mirror or slipped into your pocket saying … “I love you.”
4. Love and live in the numbers. The bank, the bills and the income numbers. The P&L spreadsheet. The market size, KPI’s and projected reach. The miles, the dress size, and the home address. Numbers are currency and a lifeline.
5. Travel even when standing still. Through books, movies and in messages. Through the internet and onto the cloud. Reach out into the world, study it, learn from it and bring it close.
6. When an opportunity presents itself, embrace it. With two hands and eyes open, open the door, jump through the window and run with the possibility that naturally emerges in the world.
7. Invest with integrity, early and often as the sun rises and the dust settles. Invest in your heart, your body, and your mind every morning. While the light rises, set your intentions for the day and then drift into enacting them.
8. Embrace off-roading. Not every road is set in stone or a path well-trodden. Some require creating. Make a plan, set your goals yet when diverted, trust in the way and go off-road.

Bennett Labs, Bennett Day School

Photos with: The FWD Collective, Betsy Ziegler, 1871, mHUB, IMSA Element Entrepreneurship Team, Power Pitch Judges, Steve and Jamie Chen, EdTechTeacher, Innovation in Edu, EarthTech, Brissa Del Mar and Women2Women, Michael Donnelly from FWD Collective, JT from Shine Coaching, Family — Dad, Mum, Brothers, Sisters, Friends — — DK, Will (RIP), Jessica, Bracken, Beth, Misha, Bucktown Crossfit, Heather Vickery from the Vickery & Co, and the Brave Files, Phil Sage, Tanya Thompson, ChiTAG, Bennett Labs and the amazing faculty and peers at Bennett Day School. ❤