In speaking about my new company, The Transformational Institute, to others, it kept coming to me that my life has been all about learning, teaching, and transforming myself? A woman who attended a LinkedIn Live I did a few weeks ago, whom I hadn’t seen in decades, said she was shocked at the woman I had become. It was so transformative she was in shock. I hadn’t noticed or remembered until she pointed it out.
It is amazing how we can get so caught up in doing our life, our business, our chores, that somewhere in there we stop noticing the impact, the natural flow, the spontaneous fluctuations that take ,place in life. I was talking about just that with a client today. She was so busy keeping her demanding partner happy she forgot what it was she wanted, why she was doing what she was doing, and even what she wanted in her life. She said: “I haven’t thought about it in a long time. I just do what I do.”
In living that robotic life, where is there room for pleasure? For joy? For feeling filled by your work? Soothed by your thoughts? Or excited by your visions of what’s possible? Taking the time to stop, to breathe, to discover or rediscover why you are doing what you are doing, why you bought this house, this car, created or joined this career, all calls you to connect with you. Sitting back in those moments when you made those decisions, remembering the fear, the hopes, and the dreams, you had and may still have, is important.
Do you know that Independence Day, a special day in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence, ratified on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States of America wasn’t a federal holiday until 1941? It wasn’t that it wasn’t valued, yet someone, or someones, sat down and decided we need to be more conscious, more aware, of the importance of this day and take a special day to remember as a country, to celebrate as a country, a decision and an accomplishment that took place almost 200 hundred years earlier.
Someone said, “Let’s sit down and remember what decision we made and what we have achieved.” I think that’s a great idea so why not do the same for yourself? Your life? Your decisions? Your accomplishments? Everything you have achieved or have grown into is because of choices you have made. Remember them on a regular basis, don’t sit and spend hours on it, but remember, the transformational gift of that supports a life of gratitude, for you and for all those who walked this journey with you. Such a way of life calls you to keep things in perspective, and to slow down.
You have education and/or transformation. When we grow as people. When we see things differently. When we realize we are not the people we used to be 10, 15, 20 years ago, we get to see we are growing, changing, and becoming. With all that happening, doing it consciously rather than unconsciously permits you to decide what type of transformation you want next. Becoming a parent of an adult child versus a toddler calls for a different, more evolved parent that you must grow into. Don’t just educate yourself, choose to become the person that education calls you to be. The inner journey, the letting go, the transformations that occur make your life so real, so liberating, and truly so joy-filled.
