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.