Our lives are like a jigsaw puzzle of thousands of pieces. Each piece is needed to become the amazing person you are destined to be. Although there are pieces you want to leave out. When you try to manipulate or force things to happen, you are not allowing the process of your life to unfold by the Divine plan.
Without all the pieces, you miss seeing the masterpiece of who you truly are.
Treasure the magnificent person you are. All your pieces – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Who are you today?
Not the child or adolescent. Or even the principal I was back in the 1990s and early 2000s. But, today.
I think one of the most important quality to attain is to become conscious of who you are and how you are interacting in life and with others each day.
Are you more than your past? Yes, your past is part of your puzzle.
Who are you today at this stage of life?
For example, are you reacting still from the child you were or have you learned new coping skills and can act like the adult you are? Do you interact with your partner or adult children from an adult – to adult or from your child or parent self? I know when I was going through coaching training one of the skills we worked on was paying attention to how we reacted or responded in everyday situations when we had disagreements. We wrote down what happened. What we found out is most of us were responding like 7 or 12-year-olds even though we were in later decades of our lives.
Where have you grown and where are you the same, or maybe even stuck?
I’ve learned more about being healthy. As Joshua Rosenthal says, “Healthy is a vehicle, not a destination.”
Healthy is what you eat, how you love, what you think and how you move.
I’ve learned how much I was a rule follower and how limiting and rigid that was. So grateful to have been freed.
I realized the opposite of courage is not so much fear as it is conformity. For so long, I wanted to fit in but in my coaching business, I realized I needed to be unique and have my own flair.
I’m not the same physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally.
I have new puzzle pieces.
What can you let go of or attain more of to be the authentic you, your masterpiece? What parts of you need redefining? What qualities are the same? What parts of you do you take forward to fill in the missing puzzle pieces? What have you learned and become?
Are you a super-ager? “Harvard Medical School defines super-agers as people in the 70s or 80s who have the mental or physical capability of their decades- younger counterparts.” They are willing to learn new things and willing to see problems as challenges rather than give up.
Are you a mentor providing hope and possibilities? Sharing a more optimist vision of what’s possible for someone. Like my husband came from a lower income, poorer school. He has owned his business for over 43 years and been successful. What a great image for those kids to realize you CAN overcome. He can teach perseverance, commitment and the importance of building relationships. He didn’t realize what he had to offer others like being a mentor. What a brilliant puzzle piece to tie much of his life together.
I am more “unproductive” than I have been in my life. I’ve had a hard time with it. I made much of my worth about being productive, doing, doing, doing, doing and doing. I know from my Shadow work with coaching that when you aren’t okay with quality, it is owning you and will show up in your life in ways you do not like. What I realized is that being unproductive has allowed me to be more present whether in conversations, playing with our grandkids, enjoying meals, not being so hurried or focused on the next thing to accomplish. It’s allowed me to add more fun in my life, be detached from expectations of mine and others and not worry so much about all I have “to do.” So look at all I gained.
I’ve also been able to let go of some of the negative feelings about being unproductive like being worthless or useless because I’m not as productive as I once was. What I’ve gained are a lot more attentiveness and appreciation. A lighter, freer puzzle piece.
Who are you today? Hopefully, not just the image of who you think you are supposed to be or a repeat of your past.
What’s the “new you”, the 2019 version, look like internally and externally?