If you are completely happy and living every day to its fullest in your way, under your terms, that celebrates the best of you and honours your journey of life – you do not need to read another word of this article. Move on to the next article in this incredible magazine.
If, however, you are not feeling as happy or fulfilled as you’d like to be, then I invite you to join
me on the continued quest of creating your best life. To gain more understanding and to get
more from the life that has been given to you, start with the awareness that you have an
infinite amount of choices available to you at all times. Perhaps this makes you feel a little
nervous. Hooray! You are exactly where you need to be for fear can play a very positive role in
directing you into making different choices.
I lost my mom to cancer in July 1999. Seven years later, almost to the day, I lost my only sister
to suicide. While I was training for my seventh marathon, I found myself recovering from a four hour surgery to remove an orange-sized tumour from my stomach. The surgery was invasive, and the scars are real, but I survived. These huge life experiences, although excruciating to have
gone through, have become my personal guides towards deeper happiness. Because I’m still
here, that just means I have lots more to learn and celebrate. Bring it on!
No matter how pivotal, extreme or unexpected certain life events may be, they can be seen as
opportunities to wake us up to what we need to learn. This is when choice becomes your best
ally. The responsibility of being a beautiful, imperfect human, is that every day, we have the
opportunity to make different choices. Like a sailboat navigating a storm, or a calm day, both of these circumstances require the captain to make choices on how best to keep the boat upright, moving soundly toward its ultimate destination. How we respond to what is happening in our lives, is our ticket to write and right our course as we walk towards our best life.
1. Be Open to Change and Renewed Thought:
Every cell in our body is completely renewed every seven years. This is a scientific fact. It’s not
my opinion. The fact is – even if we don’t think we are changing or feel ready to change, we are,
just by being alive. Have you considered that right now you are being prepared for something way beyond the most incredible circumstance of which you’ve ever dreamt? The journey of life is a process and sometimes it seems impossible to see past any of it when we feel held down with immeasurable challenges. And that is ok. Take the time you need to regroup and renew your thinking, but stay accountable to your goals. Remember, we humans are resilient by nature. No matter how hard and far we fall, we rise anew. Science tells us so.
2. Surrender and Let it Go with Love:
Denial of what is happening around you allows you to suppress thoughts and feelings, blocking
you from being able to mature your thinking. If your mindset about a circumstance is too negative
and you find yourself locked in so tightly that you feel you have no choices, consider letting it go. Yes, let go of the rope because it is no longer serving you well. The act of surrendering is much like the rising tide that lifts all ships. It breaks the pattern of what seems to be happening. Think about when you break the pattern of hiccups by drinking upside down or holding your breath and then all of sudden your hiccups are gone. The act of doing something differently in order to get a different result is sometimes all we need to break the pattern of our thoughts to be able to see the horizon more clearly. Yes, sometimes it is that simple.
3. Learn to Quietly Love Yourself:
When my grand-niece was only a few days old, she reached out to me to be held. Her mom was
right there and yet, she wanted to be held by me. This sweet innocent bundle of unconditional
love melted my heart with that gesture. She just saw me for who I was right at that moment. I
was enough for her. Feeling unseen for who we really are is the essence of why I believe so
many people feel such pain in their hearts. The past stories of our lives sometimes have us
believing that we are not lovable or good enough. How unfair it is to keep hanging onto a
narrative from the past that continues to cause us pain in the present. Part of loving yourself is to quietly get out of your own way. And getting out of your own way actually allows you to see
yourself as others who love you, see you. All of your quirks, all of your past traumas and your
glorious triumphs have made you who you are. They have brought you to this moment. The average human takes 16 breaths per minute. Every breath you take is a factual reminder that
you are alive, you are here and what you bring to this world matters every single minute of the
day. There are only 1440 minutes in a day, 10,080 minutes in a week and 525,600 minutes in a
year. In certain ways, it seems like an eternity when you break it down this way, but we all know how fast a day can fly by. No matter what the outside pressures may be for you, find a way to see to it that you claim your space in this world today. The legacy of what you are building, from everything you are learning about yourself, matters. Make it your life’s mission to make every minute of your life matter too.
