Hi! It’s me again. It’s been a while since I have popped up here. Life has been busy (but isn’t it always?) and my head has been all over the place for the past few weeks. In October I traveled to California to spend five days with my glorious friend Katie and upon my return, I felt changed. There was some kind of awakening in me. I’m still processing it all and will continue to for the next while. I am not sure where it will take me or where I will end up but I am really enjoying this journey. Today marks a new moon and with that, I can feel change arising. It’s exciting.

Amongst all of the wild stirrings in that busy mind of mine, I have been thinking a lot about living your best life. I’m talking about living life how you are meant to. Enjoying every moment. Doing all of those things that you have said you would do. That you dream of doing.

I am surrounded by so many talented and beautiful people. But more often than not, these people seem as though they are being dragged down. That they are not living up to their full potential. You know the ones who have one bad thing after another happen to them. Or the ones who complain about their jobs yet do nothing to change them. Or the ones who complain about their weight but sit a home every night not doing anything about it (hint: get moving, get active, eat healthy, cut down on that alcohol). The ones who have dreams but cannot find the time to follow them. (Pro tip: you will always make the time for what is truly important to you.) You see other people who are no more talented but living much more successful lives and you wonder, why am I not? It kind of bums you out and maybe drags you down even further. You have these dreams and ideas too and they are just not coming to fruition.

The thing is, the whole Magic of Believing isn’t enough. You cannot just make that inspiration board that Oprah told us years ago to do, you have to actually take the steps to allow your dreams to come to life. I have always been a believer in that there are two types of people in this world: those who talk about doing something and those who actually do what they talk about. That’s it. Any one more successful than you is not necessarily more talented nor qualified for it, it’s just that they took all of the necessary steps to put themselves out there and DO it.

 

I am someone who tries to always do what I say I will. If you are a good friend and you move away, I will tell you that I will visit and I will. Just ask all of my people who have transported themselves all over this awesome planet (hi friends!). If I say “going” on your Facebook event invite, you can guarantee that I will show up. If I tell you that I will have your wedding photos in your hands within a month of your wedding, you bet they will be there. But there are lots of things in my life that I tell myself I want to do and I fall short. For example, in the spring I started a journal after reading The Happiness Project. In the book, Gretchen Rubin talks about wanting to write more but often not being able to find the time to. So she started a new daily journal and in it, she writes a sentence or two about her day. It forces her to write if even just a little and I loved that idea. So in the spring I started my own daily journal and I was really good at it, for the few couple of months. Then wedding season began and I gotlazy distracted and I stopped. I picked up the journal again and brought it to California with me. Again, I was really good at it for all of two weeks and then,life got busy and I got lazy. Writing this journal is something that I want to do (and hopefully by writing about it here, it will be motivation to get back on it. When you see me next, ask me how that is going. I work well with pressure from others!).

I live a pretty darn good life. It’s one that I have created for myself and while it is not always easy, all of the tough moments are what allow me to sit here in my dream apartment with a candle lit, a cup of tea and my incredible husbandsitting in the next room. All of my life choices are what allowed me to take today off, just for us so we could spend time together and to do some cool things in this awesome city of Toronto. This September I turned thirty-five and while I feel that I have done a pretty good job at this life-thing, I am realising that I am not that young anymore and that there is a heck of a lot more that I can and should be doing. I love my life but I know that I am not living up to my full potential. I know that there are more things that I am capable of doing. Of what I want to do. That list of things currently includes: writing a book, doing a personal photography project (or ten), finding more focus in my photography career, helping others and giving them more of what I can offer, finding a spot in Mexico to call my our own. I am starting to make moves for these things and it feels great.

I want to live the best life that I can and I want to do so in the most authentic manner and along that way, I want to continue to surround myself with people who are also striving for the same things. We are all in control of our lives. Every day we make an infinite number of choices for ourselves. It’s time to be more aware of those choices. It’s time to become more aware of our potentials and our talents and to really put them to use. I want to be successful and I want everyone around me to be as well. Sometimes we just need a little nudge to let us know that we are heading in the right direction. Keep talking but throw in more doing. If you don’t like something, change it. And as Katie would say, be kind to yourself as you embark on this new adventure. Come along with me, I have your back and I’m excited to see what you will do.