So often we judge events as being good or bad, but Buddhism teaches us that these interpretations are mind-made. But when we're constantly focused on the road ahead, as opposed to where we are right now, there are some surprising consequences. This insight and wisdom has been especially poignant and challenging for me to embrace over the last three months as I have been suffering with hives. Itching for most of my waking and sleeping hours has challenged my belief that I am exactly where I need to be since I can barely stand to be in my own skin.

Create a meaningful purpose statement for the New Year. What is it that makes you feel alive? This “aliveness” is energy. Trust the electrical surge of connection, positivity and happiness the sensation brings to your state of being. This feeling is directly linked to emitting energy. Energy produced triggers a chemical release in the body to create thoughts of action. Thoughts conjured will contribute to connection and produce an outcome of desired action. Your intention is a choice to live life in a way that represents your truth and ultimately what you choose create for yourself. Happiness is a choice. 3) Identify obstacles. Embrace friction and detours that show up. When you don’t get what you thought you wanted, see it as the grace of God at work in your life. And that something better is seeking to happen than you can see right now. I became less judgmental, more insightful, and willing to be of service in the lives of others. I gained greater appreciation for all that I had and for those who helped contribute meaning in my life. Gratitude is a contagious act. Make a list of 100 aspects of your life that you are grateful for.After working that job I disliked, I decided I wasn’t in the right place, physically or psychologically.

The message from the last ever episode, was of huge significant in my humble opinion and it was summed up in last conversation between Bran Stark and Jon Snow....Believe it or not, the constant pull and striving in our lives to 'get somewhere' with our jobs,our relationships,our health, with wanting something to be different than what it actually is, is a significant cause of stress. After watching it, my first reaction was one of being underwhelmed. However having slept on in I now feel completely different. It was beautiful ! So if you aren’t where you thought you would or should be by this time in your life, I invite you to celebrate where you are now and the journey you have been on this far. Everything you have been through up until now has been preparing you to fully live your life’s purpose. It’s just that popular media glorifies the overnight success, making us impatient little humans who do our best to avoid pain.

When we aren't present in our relationships at home and at work, our relationships can go down the road of routine and slip into auto-pilot mode. Auto-pilot mode and routines helps us master our lives to make them easier to manage, but in turn this can prevent us from welcoming change and uncertainty which are ever increasing realities of both business and life. We can’t anticipate what exactly is going to happen, but we can control how we react to where we are, even when we haven’t met our own expectations or don’t feel as satisfied as our newsfeeds suggest. I love what Winston Churchill said about success – that it is “just going from one failure to another without losing momentum.” CAHPERD: California Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, & Dance State Conference “2020 IN-FOCUS” Hyatt Regency, Orange CountyThen, the intersection was changed to a roundabout (traffic circle) with no stop signs. Here, people decided when they would go. In this configuration, the most amount of traffic passed in a 15-minute interval. If you attain everything in the world but lose your authentic self in the process what’s the real gain? I love Amy Steinberg’s lyrics and am so grateful to have performed her song “Exactly” with my women’s singing group many times over the last four years. These brilliant lyrics are a powerful reminder that there are remarkable opportunities that surround us every moment when we recognize that we are exactly where we need to be.

You may find as you become more of your authentic self that life unfolds and the world begins to open up to you in ways you could never have imagined. As social media has evolved, so has the need for us to understand what we’re looking at through everyone’s filters. We have a hard time distinguishing between our perception vs. reality. We are only gaining—knowledge, wisdom, experience, lessons. Everything we go through teaches us how to survive. Every obstacle helps us learn who we are. Every painful moment breaks us, but builds us. And little by little, we are making it through.Don’t measure the success of whatever you’re doing against how your peers are doing. If I am using my peers’ success as the standard gauge of success for my own business, I am failing. When we’re constantly being flooded with other people’s highlight reels, we start to feel like our own accomplishments aren’t enough. They are. I’ve been running a startup for the last two years, and it has been among the most humbling and hardest things I’ve ever done.