How do we change the world? We start small. We create a life we love.
“The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter,
even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
BUOYANT launched into the world this week, and I have felt excitement, anxiety, and joy cycling through me, sometimes all three emotions at once. I wasn’t prepared, though, for the experience of feeling I was sending my baby to her first year of school.
Will she make friends with the other boys and girls? Be invited to play? Find her way on her own?
And then, comments from readers started coming in:
“I’m devouring it!”
“I cannot put it down!”
“You are such a great storyteller!”
“I’m recommending BUOYANT to all my clients!”
Needless to say, I am thrilled with the response.
The Most Creative Act of All
Writing a book has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl. And as over the moon I am to have accomplished this, I am reminded that the transformation I experienced during the years of becoming a published author is where the true magic lies.
The design and full living of one’s life, to create a life you love is, in my opinion, our most important and creative act of all.
I wonder how often we are truly intentional about what it is we want to create each day, and if we are moving toward a greater vision of the legacy we want to leave. Are we trying to create a life we love, or are we on some kind of automatic pilot in a distracted, numbed-out existence just “getting through the day”? Have we shelved the dreams that once called to us like sirens on a rocky shore?
Create a Life You Love
Annie Dillard, author of The Writing Life, famously wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Will we wake up one morning and have the painful realization we have lived a life of days strung together by reaction, habit, and boredom? Or will we fully embrace the adventure of living our true nature, the one and only us?
Can we find the courage to dig down under the layers of time, through the sediment of others’ expectations and our own feelings of shortcomings and failure, to remember and retrieve what we came here to do and experience? To create what we, and only we, can create? To create a life we love and a world we’re proud of?
Making Your Mark
How is it that you want to make your mark? What is it that you will create with what poet Mary Oliver calls your one, precious life that leaves a legacy of your highest intentions made manifest in the world?
Take twenty minutes right now and write your answer to the following questions in your journal:
1) When I am gone, what is it that I want to survive me?
2) How might I invest in improving my present situation as well as in leaving something of substance behind for those in the future? Remember: we simply cannot know what will make others happy. But we can always know for ourselves.
When we let ourselves surrender to doing what it is that brings us alive, we can shape the lens through which others look. When we expand our own awareness and perspective, we invite others to do the same.
It is there, in our intentional creating, that we live fully, and in turn, change the world.