Unwrapping the Gift of Life.
In this busy world we are living do you ever wonder how your life is evolving? Where are you going?
Where have you been?
The day I do the greatest evaluation of my life is on my birthday, which was a few days ago. As I unwrapped the gift of a new year of life, I felt my heart filled with joy and gratitude. I sat down to reflect on where I have been and where I am going. The main reason I do this exercise is first, to be grateful for the beautiful things that happened in the year, and to make sure I had processed any challenge or loss I may have encountered. Another reason to do this evaluation is to do a balance of my achievements and my mistakes, so I can learn from the mistakes and make an action plan for the year to come.
In this message, I will share with my greatest achievement and my greatest lesson.
This past year was an important year in my professional life, and I am grateful. I joined the PESI (link) family and started presenting nationwide the seminar “Transforming Grief and Loss.” This has been very close to my heart as it is based on the 11 Principles of Transformation® the system I created to help people transform loss into growth. I also wrote a book with the same title, which has also been a source of joy. However, the greatest of my achievements was to finish writing the book about my father’s life. And…what makes it the biggest win? The fact that I have realized once more that our loved ones continue living in our hearts. My greatest purpose has been to immortalize my father’s message in a book.
Now, what about my greatest lesson to learn? It has been, to know how to self-manage. I am not saying to learn time management, but self-management. We all have 24 hours a day, it all depends on what we do with the time. It has to do with being able to prioritize; to evaluate what is important, and what can wait; to learn how to balance our personal and professional life; it is to embrace more me-time and be able to say no. I had a conversation with a client about the challenge we have with having too much to do. It seems we are always in a hurry! If we load our plate with too much food, it can give us the sensation we are “stimuli overload” and at the end, we are not having quality of life. In the seminars I do with PESI, one of the losses we explore is “loss of self” as we get buried under so many roles and responsibilities. At times these roles just happened. Other times, we allow them to happen; even when we are grieving. We may not take the time to grieve because we are too busy.
Because of this realization, my commitment this year is to manage myself in a better way. I want to let go of spending time in minor things and concentrate on what matters most. Life is precious. Life is short. Life is a gift. Therefore, instead of ripping off the paper as I unwrap it, I want to pull out the ribbons and open it in a delicate and loving manner.
How are you opening your gift?
Remember…your life has meaning!
Ligia/18
