(Click play to listen to the full post here!)

Last month I wrote about “My Year of Living Dangerously”. Around mid-March I was hit by inspiration, perhaps Divine inspiration, to start a new chapter in this second half of life. I decided March 17, 2023, was my New Year’s Day. I started calling it “My Year of Living Dangerously”.

As with many ideas/inspirations, I wasn’t particularly clear on what that meant. I know it meant removing the “safety net” from my life’s high-wire act.

What I’m learning is that safety net removal is scary. It is also incredibly FREE-ing. Safety is one of those insidious mindset fixtures that are constructed over the years beginning with our parents when we are helpless infants, fearless toddlers, curious children, and adventurous young adults.

To our parents’ credit, it’s what has enabled us to be alive today and have this conversation (AND what contributed to our parents’ gray or lost hair, anxiety, and insomnia). So, I’m not knocking safety as a necessary device to survive and live a long, healthy life.

BUT NOW, in the second half, some of those safety fixtures have become (here it comes again….) prison walls. I had become a safety “addict” or at least safety dependent.
(Inner voice saying…. “Better safe than sorry!”??)

I had become increasingly:

Afraid to step outside my comfort zone (read my most recent chapter published in “Mindset Mastery”).

Afraid to try new things because I’m “too old”.

Afraid to try something before it’s been proven to work for someone else.

Afraid of what others think.

Afraid of rejection.

Afraid of being different.

Afraid of who’s inside me wanting to break out and fly like a Flying Wallenda, without a net!

Are you hearing this?

Since my New Year began I’ve learned a lot. I’ve changed a lot. I committed to posting daily in my private FB group, Graceing Agefully™. Every day I’m posting a new thing to LET GO for 365 Days of Letting Go. I’m learning what a critical step LETTING GO is to Graceing Agefully OR to optimizing life in the second half. LETTING GO is hard. I’ve been hanging on to a lot of ‘stuff’, physical, emotional, and spiritual for a lot of years.

I’m also learning it’s NEVER DONE. Day 1 of LETTING GO of anything is like the first day of a new exercise regimen or diet (cringe word). You try it and at first, you’re all like “I can DO this!” “This feels great” “Why didn’t I start this 10 years ago?”

Then, you wake up the next morning and your muscles ache so badly, you can barely get out of bed OR you’re STARVING and the first thing you spy in the kitchen is a bagel and a toaster next to the butter dish. You know how that goes. Same for LETTING GO.

I’m PRACTICING as I preach. I’m just putting it out there. I’m not judging myself, excuse me, I’m TRYING not to judge myself.

I’m baiting the hook and waiting to see who bites. I know I’m hitting home when the views, reactions, and comments increase and they are. OR I know I’ve hit on something that resonates when followers increase and they are.

I also get up in the morning with a better feeling. I’m letting go of lots of things, little by little. I’m developing habits that clear my mental clutter and open me to possibilities. People ask if I’m going to be able to keep it up for 365 days. I don’t know, but I keep finding more and more things to let go of every day——so, yeah!

Then, there’s my word of the year, Integrate. Again, the word came to me as if by magic or Divinity. I had a fairly specific idea of what it meant for me at the time. In the beginning, it meant living a “well-integrated life”. That means removing the barriers that separate the 5 key areas of life, Physical, Mental/emotional, Financial, Relationship, and Spiritual.

Lowering the “jersey walls” opens us up to dance deftly from one to another in our day.

Further, it means building a daily life practice that honors each area equally. A life in which work, play, and the rest of life are not separate. This WAS my specific definition of a “well-integrated life” and how Integrate applied to my year ahead.

What I’m learning is, my life is a system. The world is a system. Systems are interdependent. Being whole, living holistically, and living with INTEGR-ity (rooted in integration) is acknowledging and honoring that I, as an individual, am a system and I am part of a larger system, the world. Everything within that system plays an equal part. Every part affects the system’s performance.

At this point, I’m recognizing my power and responsibility through the process of integration. Every act, every word I say, every breath I take affects the system. That’s a knife that can cut two ways. I KNOW it empowers me to change the world in a good way.

Small acts of kindness (a smile, a helping hand, a friendly wave, a call to someone in need) has a ripple effect. Nothing is too small. Go out and change your world and through it change the world today.

Ask me about Inner Peace = World Peace, September 21, 2024