Every time we interact with others, we have the choice.

We can listen to, acknowledge, and let go of their words, or we can take what they are saying personally. Taking things personally is often the result of perceiving a person’s actions or words as an affront or slight. We read negative intent in an individual’s words or actions. But what people do and say has no bearing upon us and is usually based on their own experiences, emotions, and perceptions.

If we attempt to take what they do or say personally, we may end up feeling hurt without reason.

New Year’s is the traditional time of rebirth, renewal, and resolutions.

My New Year’s resolution is to choose my destination wisely, as I journey through life, but try not to hurry there. Hold steadfast to my faith that I will arrive soon enough.

My resolution is to explore, search and listen, stop worrying when I wander the back roads, the forgotten paths, the unknown ways, keeping my dreams in my heart as the light that guides me. My resolution is to seek out new voices, strange sights, bold ideas – to enrich my spirit and soul.

My resolution is to keep my head up, my hopes high, enjoy the journey and know the true worth of my travels lies not in where I’ve come to be, but in who I become along the way.

My friends, join me. It is NEVER too late to start anew. Thank the past for all the powerful, profound lessons. DROP the baggage, fears, doubts, regrets, resentment, and hurt into the abyss of the past. Release it all. Walk forward and leap arms wide open into the NEW YEAR, FREE of all that has weighed you down. Embrace the endless possibilities that await.

Wishing every single one of you and your loved ones a magical New Year that showers you with renewed courage, bold inspiration, unfettered laughter, unending joy and oh so much LOVE. May serenity smile upon you. In the difficult moments, may you have a bounty of strength to navigate those valleys. May we all continue to grow and shine our respective lights. May we rise and flourish as individuals and as an inextricably connected collective.

Let’s dust off those wings. It’s time to soar!

Hello 2016. I’m ready.

In my ideal work world we’d live and die by 4 mantras:

1. Innovation

We work to make a difference — to influence and inspire. I’m surrounded by people who support diverse perspectives. We encourage each other to think big, take risks, and make an impact.

2. Quality

I work in synergy with an incredible team. We deliver PHENOMENAL products over and over and over. By embracing diverse perspectives, we are able to develop better solutions, and approach decisions or challenges in innovative ways. Global diversity and inclusion are essential elements of our culture, inspiring collaboration, and driving growth. Unencumbered by egotistic trivialities, we are focused, disciplined, and continuously strive for exceptional results. We respect each other and work together. We are unstoppable.

3. Agility

We embrace change. We are decisive and move quickly to keep pace with our customers. We outpace the competition.

4. Integrity

We hold ourselves accountable to do what is right and to deliver on our commitments. We are authentic and trustworthy.

This is me moving on. This is me accepting the ache of missing you.

This is me waking up every day, aware of what is missing, but accepting of the fact that this is my life now, that this is the way things are going to be. This is me understanding that it is okay to feel my heartbreak and miss someone who was once a staple in my life.

But this is also me understanding that life does go on. That one day I will hear the songs and smile, I will sleep in my sheets and they will no longer smell like you; one day I will fall in love again, one day I will look back on this and my hands will not shake with the heaviness of it all.

This is me moving on. This is me accepting the fact that we will no longer make memories together. This is me coming to terms with the reality of a future without you. This is me understanding that you will do everything we had ever spoken about — you will live a life you are proud of and become the person you told me you hoped you could be. You will take the trips, you will experience all of the things you wanted to experience, you will love — deeply, and wholly with every inch of your patchwork heart, but all of that will happen without me by your side.

This is me moving on. This is me accepting that sometimes beautiful things end. This is me understanding that there is nothing I can say, or do, to fix that. This is me coming to terms with the fact that sometimes leaving is an act of love, too. This is me accepting that endings don’t have to be messy. This is me understanding how incredible it really is — that for a moment in time, in a world of billions, two strangers were in the right place, at the right time, and something transpired between them. This is my heart swelling with the thought — that at one point in time, we were the lucky ones. At one point in time, we beat the odds.

This is me making peace with the fact that sometimes hearts don’t fully align. This is me believing that walking away is the bravest thing you can do. It’s choosing to believe in the possibility of finding happiness.

I am starting to learn that maybe, when you walk away, you’re not making the biggest mistake of your life. Maybe, when you walk away, your life is just beginning.

– Modern Love

In life, we tend to focus on acquiring possessions rather than getting rid of them.

We fill our lives with material objects and harbor emotional baggage. We find it so difficult to let go of the stories we’ve told ourselves around our stuff. Many of us are not conscious of how much is no longer adding value to our lives. We fiercely hold on to stuff because it makes us feel secure or comfortable but it seldom satisfies the deep inner longings for fulfillment and satisfaction. The more we horde, the more we need. We’re concerned that we “might” need something in the future, so we save everything, “just in case.” We continue to buy items we already own because things “just disappear” in the clutter. We feel so overwhelmed, anxious, and defeated around the idea of owning less. Or don’t know where to begin — so we just live with the chaos.

When we are ready to let go of our baggage and be vulnerable it becomes possible to recognize the emotional hold that our possessions (and stories) can have on us.

Decluttering life has lots of benefits. Less stress. Less debt. Less to clean. Less to organize. More energy. More freedom…

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Decluttering life has lots of benefits. Less stress. Less debt. Less to clean. Less to organize. More energy. More freedom.

Here are 4 fun tips I found to start building momentum towards a simpler, richer life:

1. Give one item away each day. This would remove 365 items every single year from your home. Donate clothes you never wear. To identify them, simply hang all your clothes with hangers in the reverse direction. After wearing an item, face the hanger in the correct direction. Discard the clothes you never touched after a few months.
2. Use the Four-Box Method. Get four boxes and label them: trash, give away, keep, or re-locate. Enter any room in your home and place each item into one of the following boxes. Don’t skip a single item, no matter how insignificant you may think it is. This may take days, weeks, or months, but it will help you see how many items you really own and you’ll know exactly what to do with each item.
3. Think before and after: Choose one part of your home, like your kitchen counter, and take a photo of a small area. Quickly clean off the items in the photo and take an after photo. Once you see how your clutter-free  home could look, it becomes easier to start decluttering more.
4. Get help from a friend. Have a friend or family member go through your home and suggest a handful of big items to throw away or give to someone else. If you defend the item and want to keep it, your friend has to agree with your reason. If they don’t agree, it’s time to get rid of it.

This is how you forgive the person who broke your heart.

You forgive them by giving yourself time to heal. This doesn’t happen all at once or overnight. It’s a slow progression. You take two steps forward and some steps back. Sometimes it won’t make sense. But you grow a bit stronger, more resilient, every single day. Even if you don’t always see it. You take the time to heal at the root – to understand painful events in your life that creates the bitterness and issues you are dealing with in the present. You find ways to understand and address your emotional unmet needs. You renounce the lies you’ve believed about yourself and replace them with the truth.

You forgive them by focusing on yourself. You stop pouring your energy into toxicity. You unplug. You unfollow. Practice self-care. You reread your favorite books. You go out with your best friends, laugh, and remember how good things can be when you surround yourself with positivity. You tell your broken heart it’s okay to take a break – to remember how to smile again.

You forgive them by removing yourself from the situation. The longer you dwell in it, in the heartache, the more it festers. It’s difficult, but you have to leave it alone. Honor your emotions. Honor your feelings. But don’t keep circling back and obsessing over what occurred. Imagine it like a balloon. Let it float away. Tell it goodbye. It can’t hurt you now.

You forgive them by accepting what they did. That doesn’t mean you think it’s okay or you’ve let them off the hook. It doesn’t mean the pain is erased and they aren’t responsible for their actions. It means accepting what’s done is done and admitting there is no rewind button. You can only move forward.

You forgive them by regaining your life. Because there is so much more than just one person who broke your heart.

The poem Continue was written by Maya Angelou

The poem offers words of hope and perseverance… a message of empowerment and hope, of courage and generosity, a call to action and an answer to the question all of us ask ourselves about our ability to make a difference in our own lives and in the lives of others.

On the day of your birth
The Creator filled countless storehouses and stockings
with rich ointment, luscious tapestries,
and antique coins of incredible value,
jewels worthy of a queen’s dowry.
They were set aside for your use
Alone

Armed with faith and hope
And without knowing of the wealth which awaited
You broke through dense walls of poverty
And loosed the chained of ignorance which
threatened to cripple you so that you could walk
A free woman into a world which needed you.

My wish for you is that you continue.
To be who and how you are…
To astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.

Continue to let your eloquence elevate people to heights they had only imagined.
Continue to remind people that each is as good as the other and that no one is beneath nor above you.
Continue to remember your own young years and look with favor upon the lost, least and lonely.
Continue to take the hand of the despised and diseased and walk with them proudly in the high street.

Some might see you and be encouraged to do likewise.

Continue to plant a kiss of concern on the cheek of the sick and the aged and infirm and count that action as natural and to be expected.
Continue to let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer
and let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
Continue to spare no vision which comes to enlarge your range and increase your spirit.

My wish for you is that you to continue.
Continue to dare to love deeply and risk everything for the good thing.
Continue to float in the sea of infinite substance which set aside riches for you before you had a name.
Continue and by doing so, you and all your dreams will be able to continue…

Eternally.

Maybe I don’t need love… right now.

Maybe I still need to expand my horizons, to travel across different oceans, meet more people who will inspire me. Maybe I just need to have freedom – the freedom to choose where to go, who to be and what to do without having another human being to think about.

Maybe I still need more time to figure out what my heart really needs. Maybe I need to learn more about what kind of love I want and cleanse my heart. Maybe I need to love my heart the way no one knew how. Maybe I need to be for myself everything I’ve been asking people to be for me.

Maybe I need to be my person for now. Hold my own hand. Maybe I need to learn that I’m my own security. I’m my own safety. I’m the only one who knows how to calm the chaos in my mind and heal the wounds in my heart. Maybe I’m meant to kiss my own scrapes and scars because I’m the only one who knows how deep they are. I’m the only one who knows how much they hurt. Maybe I need to learn how to mend the broken pieces. Maybe for now, I’m the one for me because I need to learn how to live with my pain and past — all of it. Maybe I need to learn how to fix the years I tormented myself. To reshape myself. To redeem myself.

Maybe all I need right now is me because I need to work on the relationship with myself. Maybe right now I need to figure out how to make the relationship with myself the most beautiful and most meaningful relationship of my life.

Nice line from Ratan Tata’s Lecture-

If u want to Walk Fast,  Walk Alone

But  if u want to Walk Far,

Walk Together….