We live our life in patterns. The way we brush our teeth, where we shop, how we move, how we eat. How we do everything. We live our life in constant patterning.

Travel disrupts those patterns. It expands us. It challenges us. It grows us.

Short road trips or short tourist trips don’t dislodge patterns that much. But extensive trips press a different pause button.

Having just returned from a 6 week-long trip to Australia to see our daughter brought me great insights.

Constantly staying with people living in Australia in different cities, in rural areas and urban areas, I experienced their lived reality, their culturescapes, their patterning.

There were many deep discussions with different mothers, older and younger, juggling work and motherhood, the constant push and pull of life in different life stages. Seeing different forms of mothering. Looking at my own patterns.

Deep reflections. That quiet reflection brought greater clarity to my life.

I saw things from afar and I saw things up close. I was forced to confront some realities and I was forced to look deeply in the mirror. I saw that my constant stressed out busy-ness as an entrepreneur had become my business.

At 64, after 25 long years as an entrepreneur, it had become my patterning. My way of being. My DNA.

As Dr. Joe Dispenza says in his remarkable book ‘Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself”:

Our experiences create different states of being:

Hours and days create moods.

Weeks and months create temperaments.

But years create personality traits.”

My challenge this year is to choose to live life differently.

And so this year I choose to live a calmer life.

Last year my word for the year was GROWTH. It was indeed exponential growth. But there was a cost attached. An energy cost.

So this year the word I choose is CALM. With numerous company challenges, I choose to say “NO” to more and yes to greater peace. To the love of unhurried time. To presence.

What is your word for this year?

What’s the ENERGY word you choose for this year?

Pause. Reflect. Lean in.

Ask yourself what are your five WHYs behind it, beneath it, below it, around it..

Emotions drive behavior.

It may reveal more than you ever realized.

I choose CALM.

What do you choose and why?

I’d love to hear…

Thank you for tribing with me.