On May 22, “Inspiring Your Best” weekly post turned five years old. I began sharing words of joy, kindness, happiness, and hope during the dark days of the COVID pandemic. The world had enough bad news, and I wanted to counter the morose cycle with lighter and more uplifting fare.
These past five years, I never missed a week and only dug into the archives a handful of times. Now and then, you need to move the furniture or at least shuffle the plants around.
As I looked through this body of work, I noticed a shift in topics, writing style, and my photography. I saw bits and pieces of life, and a new title for these weekly musings emerged.
Bits and pieces of life surround our days. Some bits make us laugh, smile, and put on our happy face—others, not so much. Life doesn’t always follow our whims, much happens by chance, often overflowing with ambiguity.
All we have control over is what lies inside of us. We own our response, attitude, and openness to the bits and pieces that shape our moments, hours, days—this thing called “my life.”
Ozan Varol, rocket scientist, turned author, received this question during a recent keynote address: “What advice would you give your 17-year-old self?” When he reflected on his journey, he saw a daring young man leave his homeland of Istanbul, bravely seek out a place in developing the Mar’s Rover, and someone determined, persistent, and a full-fledged achiever.
His advice to that 17-year-old spoke to what he believed he lost in pursuit of goals and success: the courage to explore, create, and dream.
His advice?
“Joy is your strategy.
Wonder is your metric.
Aliveness is your funnel.”
And that aliveness travels beyond happiness.
“Aliveness isn’t about feeling better; it’s about feeling better.” —Christian Dillo
We might lose our courage to wonder, the ability to face uncertainty, or live into our “aliveness” as we travel through the years, but I believe we can dig up a little (or a lot) if we give it a try.
Put a Song in Your Day
Good to Be Alive, Stayin’ Alive, and Love Will Keep Us Alive
Consider This
“These columns became my attempt to present the reader with the flowers in a tangle of weeds, the lilac of the gloaming, the most comfortable ever tread of a shoe. Inspiration to get us all through the day, without the need to text a friend a gif of a burning dumpster or to empathise with Edvard Munch’s The Scream.” —Hannah Jane Parkinson, The Joy of Small Things
I always welcome your thoughts, so please leave a comment
Thanks for reading. Feel free to forward this weekly note to someone who would enjoy a few words of inspiration. Or if you received this from a friend and want to receive my weekly post, sign up here
And always—
Be kind. Be brave. Be you.
Photos: © Kathryn LeRoy
Leave A Comment