Never Done Until We Are

I’m going to focus today on this quote from author L.R. Knost and a blog from the incredibly inspiring Hannah Wilson.

I’ve written before on how nothing stays the same forever (Hopes and Opportunities and Life is Interacting), even if it feels like it does. As Knost says, we cycle through things we consider awesome, terrible and, well, boring. Lots of boring.

Ups, downs and flatness. We need to accept and deal with all of them. I’ve written about the painful let-down fans experience after attending a big concert, in Life and Fandom. Fans can fear the flatness and downs of normal life. They are not the only ones who do so. Any activity that absorbs large chunks of our days can end up affecting our abilities to experience a rich and fully-lived life. To truly thrive.

We can’t (or shouldn’t) hide forever.

Hannah Wilson talks of this in her blog, Values-Led Leadership: Moving from Surviving to Thriving. That’s my interpretation of her amazing story, anyway. She admits that she found herself existing in the title of “Educator” to the point where she had a panic attack. She had lost herself to her job.

Thriving requires knowing and living truthfully within ourselves.

Hannah offers ways to help us define those things in her blog. She uses references from a variety of sources, who all support these key steps to thriving:

●       Know you why

●       Engage in coaching

●       Know your values

●       Be authentic

●       Live your values

●       Articulate your vision

●       Be resilient

●       Be outward-facing

●       Find your tribe

●       Find your fit

Is life breathtakingly beautiful?

I’ll be honest: I’m struggling with that one. I look at Hannah’s list and can see an action plan to a beautiful life. I can also see where I myself have clearly failed. (And hope to change that, as there is the promise of YET.)  I see Knost’s “amazing” and “awful” as applying to both my own actions and the world I find myself in. Therefore, some of it I can take the credit/blame for, but other parts seem grossly out of my control- verging on a sense of hopelessness. We need hope to see beauty.

I think a bridge between these two women’s thoughts and our realities can be found within Knost’s phrase, “soul-healing”. Hannah’s list emphasizes connecting with other people: getting a coach, facing outward, finding your tribe, finding your fit. To me, those address our inner selves: our souls. That can give us hope.

If we don’t touch other lives, our own will be hollow. So…

Breath in...

Hold on...

Relax and exhale…

Living is beautiful. Living is hell. Living is.

Never done until we are.

Yearn, Embrace & Try

I wrote the above tweet on August 16, 2017, inspired by Barbara Gruener, the author of What's Under Your Cape?: Superheroes of the Character Kind. Her blog has amazing education and mindfulness resources, including links to her book. We traded books over the summer and has unofficially mentored me- of which I am very grateful.

The idea of working with “YET” in school is very common today. “I can’t do that kind of math” becomes “I can’t do that kind of math...yet!”, for example. In her blog, Barbara took the word and broke it down into powerful action words: Yearn. Embrace. Try. Those 3 words sparked a quick Twitter-friendly poem from me which I’ve now put into an image for today’s illustration.

I yearn.

I don’t know everything and I don’t know how to do everything. Let’s embrace that. It’s fairly easy to tell someone else that we’re all a work in progress. It becomes a bit harder to admit that we ourselves don’t have all the answers.

I can embrace.

Despite what I lack, I won’t run away and hide. This is another hard one to embrace. It’s so much easier to stick with what we know. Many of us grew up believing we have to be “the best” and to not run the risk of showing weakness by stretching ourselves. We need to be OK with nervous butterflies in our stomachs. The concept of “YET” feeds into that. It reminds us that we have both a right and responsibility to grow. I should embrace learning something new.

I can try.

If I put some effort into it, I may LEARN to be able to do that math. Or get closer to it. I have a duty to at least reach out and try. I should do it proudly, without fear. Why? To show ourselves and others that Fear shouldn’t run the show of our lives. That big mountain of impossibility called Fear can loom up in front of any and all of us, at any given moment. With practice and help from others, we can rise up against it and build something good.

We’re yearning, embracing and trying TOGETHER.

This concept is for us all. Whether it's hobbies, our health, our jobs, even using new technology- we may not be there YET, but we can yearn, embrace and try. Let’s remember that we’re all in YET together. We can move forward in YET, together. We can grow stronger in YET, together. YET covers it all: our minds, our hearts and our bodies. Together.

Where are we on the journey? What kinds of encouragement can we offer ourselves today? I’m thinking YET is a great place to start.