Eleanor Roosevelt said, “in the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”
In other words: Happiness is an inside job and we are VERY POWERFUL beings. Today we are going to talk about what it means to live intentionally and fearless and I’m going to tell you about a new tool to help you jump into that feet first.
I was on a podcast interview with Emily and Erik Orton from New York last week. They are the authors of the book Seven at Sea. He is a screenwriter and one of his productions flopped – stayed open for only 5 weeks, and he had to take a temporary job in a high rise. His job gave him a view out the window of the Hudson River and he used to watch the sailboats sailing by. He started dreaming about what it would look like to learn to sail; to live life on your own terms. He wasn’t from the class of people who usually sail. His wife, Emily who stayed at home with their 5 kids, had a fear of deep water, but one step at a time they considered What Could Go Right instead of What Might Go Wrong. Soon enough they had learned how to sail, taught their children, and they found themselves living on a sailboat for a year as they traveled 5000 miles from New York to the Carribean and back. This was all done despite having very limited funds, their youngest daughter was down syndrome, and none of them had any background in sailing.
I loved this interview because when I asked them what their big takeaway from this incredible life adventure was, Emily answered that she found 3 types of confidence: 1. She learned to trust herself because she did what she set out to do. 2. Competence: She learned new skills on this adventure so she had an increased sense of Competence – how to rig, how to find food in completely unknown places, a hundred new things she learned how to do. 3. She gained a sense of comfort with uncertainty. They learned after weeks and months of sailing to new islands, not knowing their way around, not knowing where food would be on each island, not having a crystal ball about weather, or having all the answers…..they learned to trust that things would emerge and they would find their way.
Erik said – “We will not know all the answers when we begin, and that’s okay. Now we know we will figure them out.”
This last one was my favorite because it was the learned skill and choice or FAITH OVER FEAR.
I saw an ad in an Oprah magazine many years ago, it said, “Every woman has a story. It’s not how you tell it, it’s how you live it.”
The Love Your Story platform has 3 parts: 1. The Past: Most of us have stories from our past that hold us back. Those stories hold shame, or a deep sense of victimhood, or unworthiness, or regret. Until we learn to reframe these we stay stuck in places that we can’t progress past. I work with clients to help them reframe their stories. 2. The Present: When I did my original presentation to this group last year I talked about this aspect of story – the stories that we are telling ourselves right now and the importance of recognizing the negative ones that eat away at our confidence, worthiness and engagement with the world. These are critical to recognize and manage. 3. The Future – this is my focus for today’s discussion – taking action – living intentional and fearless to create the story line you want to tell, the story line you want to live. This requires intention and courage.
We do lots of this – fighting against the fear and self doubt. What’s one thing you’re doing to live intentional? To live fearless?
We are not pawns of life. We are the creators of our stories and by living intentional and fearless every day we can write a story that brings us fierce joy, pride in our risings, and...
