Choosing joy: Embracing radical authenticity
When do you feel most alive?
Two weeks ago, I shared with you that I was told they’d discovered cancer when I had my preventative double mastectomy and that had given me a bit of a wobble. Understandably so! I reminded myself that I get to choose. I get to choose how I live my life and so do you. Every day you get to choose how and where you use up your precious time, energy, love and joy.
I’ve made the choice to use this time of healing, recuperation and rest to do a lot of reflecting. Not navel gazing as my mother likes to call it, but instead reminding myself of what truly lights me up. When it is that I feel most alive, most joyful, most excited. I’m going all out on discovering what it means to be radically authentic. I’ve reminded myself that I feel most alive and most like me when I’m:
being creative
learning something new
writing
running workshops
singing in a choir
by the sea
in the woods
coaching
drawing
playing with watercolours
lost in a book
making things with my hands
gardening/in a beautiful garden
listening to incredible music
I’ve given myself permission to lose myself in the things I love doing during this time off. I’m also working out how to make sure there is time for these things when I’m working.
There will be more on how we can all work towards radical authenticity in the weeks and months to come. Today though, I’d like to be a little vulnerable and share some of my writing. I have some of my happiest moments when I have a pen in my hand whether I’m writing or drawing. Over the last couple of months I've taken part in two online creative workshops which resulted in the following two poems. I make no claims to be a poet but I was moved to write both of these poems from a place of real vulnerability and recognition of where I am in life right now.
When was the last time you reminded yourself of the things that make you feel most alive?
Why not take a little time to think about it. Ask yourself when you feel like the most true and real version of you and then go an do some of those things! Who knows where it will take you!
