The 3-Step Freedom Code to Making This Year Your Best Ever

How was last year?

Did it deliver all your dreams or did it test your resilience?

Did it flow?

Or was it full of obstacles?

Were there mountains that you didn’t want to climb.

Or choose…

Was it full of challenges that you didn’t expect?

Were there events beyond your control that changed your life forever?

Life has a habit of showing up with surprises.

Good, bad and not wished for.

I had one of those years.

Daunting.

Lost my partner and best friend.

Taken from me.

Stolen by the fragility of life.

My resilience was tested.

Your past isn’t your future

But despite the past the future has not been written yet.

It is a blank page.

You stand on the edge of new possibilities.

The new year lies before you.

It stands in front of me.

You can either let the past define you.

Wallow in its pain.

Or you can choose to strike out into new adventures and opportunities.

Flourish.

Press on.

You have the power to choose.

But the path to making a masterpiece of your life and year has many enemies.

The enemies at your gate

You have enemies at your gate. Obstacles in your way.

They are many.

Legion.

1. Time

This is something that money cannot buy.

Time cannot be bought.

It’s an ever-present enemy.

The hour glass

Flowing

Time passing.

It’s limited.

My young self thought I had eternity to live the life imagined.

To start and build my dream.

But life is short

It passes while we make plans for the future.

We get lost in triviality

Not building strong foundations.

We waste moments.

Creating trinkets.

Avoiding the deep work and becoming a master maker that changes the world.

We scroll on our devices.

Posting small updates that seek validation.

Instead of….

Stopping and focusing on building a monument to our passionate purpose.

Contemplative work.

Crafting creations of consequence.

Composing life changing symphonies.

Make sure that your time is not spent creating distracting trivial ditties.

2. The trivial

The trivial will get in the way.

Often seen as busyness.

If you allow it.

We fall in love.

We marry.

Start families.

Absorbed by the responsibility and the noise.

Careers consume.

Our present and future built on busyness.

But our focus on getting urgent things done.

Paying attention to what makes the most noise.

Gets in the way of creating a masterpiece.

We need to prioritize the importance of devoting time to the non urgent but important.

Focus on the strategic life changing actions.

Often the life building but vital consequential creations are forgotten or neglected.

Don’t let busyness stop you doing the things that matter.

3. Doubt

We often neglect our strengths

Doubt the gods within us.

Not understanding that heaven is inside.

Not without.

We doubt the innate abilities that makes us the beautiful unique person that has no peer.

Doubt the genius that happens by daily action.

Doubt the gifts that we alone bring to the universe.

We compare our insides to the outsides of others revealed in polished Facebook feeds.

Scan the Instagram posts that create envy.

Doubt that our lives are not what they should be.

Not worthy.

So…..

Don’t doubt the greatness that lies within you.

You are greater than you know.

4. Distractions

It’s a phone with alerts.

Social media.

Friends with good intentions.

Well meaning invites to events that don’t serve you.

Getting lost in the distractions of others who will waste your time for their amusement.

Don’t be distracted by the career climbing while neglecting your person building.

Don’t be distracted by the acquisition of things instead of the daily learning and the wisdom built on life experiences

Wisdom is not a thing.

It is not a product

It is the insights gained by learning from life’s challenges.

It’s the wisdom we learn from pain.

The resilience learned from facing problems head on.

You need to be willing to listen to its lessons.

Grow from its obstacles.

They are inevitable

So…. welcome it.

When it shows its frosty fierce face.

You don’t know your strength until you confront the demons.

You are stronger than you know.

5. Dark voices

You are both the thinker and the listener.

We have conversations.

With ourselves.

The dialogues often uninvited.

Dark.

And full of doubts.

Don’t let the negative thinker rule your life.

Don’t let them rule the house of your mind.

That dark voice should be labelled like an evil uncle.

If he was talking to you at home you would ask him to leave.

Not welcome and never to return.

Banished

Eckhart Tolle had this to say about the unbridled mind.

“Allow the dark and judging thought to rise. But don’t follow it.

That’s what it wants to do. That’s what it does. Like a dog following a scent

Disappearing into the horizon”

Tame your consciousness.

It requires stillness.

Be in the now.

That needs the discipline of …

Habit.

Practice.

It means being aware.

Of the conversations of our mind.

Learn to let it serve you.

Not become your master.

6. Labels

Be careful of the names you give to the events and feelings that cross your path.

Life experiences, moments and thoughts are often given labels.

Good, bad, tough, depressing are often used.

We often will blame the world.

Scream at the moon.

Blame ourselves and others for our lot in life.

Give dark feelings a name.

By naming we give them power.

Make them real.

Touchable.

Tangible.

But they are just zephyrs.

A traumatic life event has many possible labels.

“Life is terrible”

Or

“I have an opportunity to grow from this challenge”

They should be seen as an opportunity to learn and flourish despite the circumstance.

Life is.

Don’t fight it.

Embrace the monsters

The pain.

Laugh in its face.

Stare them down.

It will pass.

Your attitude to life will define you.

7. Lack of direction 

This traps many of us.

Drifting and meandering into life.

If you know your passionate purpose you are one of a lucky few.

The lucky 20%.

The rest of us need to go hunting.

Looking.

Asking questions.

Searching.

But don’t settle until you have found it.

Listen to the still small voice.

The whisper.

It doesn’t shout.

Your mission in life is to discover your mission.

Your bliss.

Purpose.

8. Friendly fire

Friends and family will want to guide you to safe harbors.

Want career paths that offer seeming security.

Traditional.

Acceptable.

They will mean well and you should consider their experience and wisdom.

So….

Your mission?

“To say no to the ordinary and to say yes to the extraordinary“.

Listen.

But at the end of the day it is your life.

When you grow up choose to be you.

9. Failure

We are all gods.

But fallible.

Earth bound.

Imperfect.

Stepping into the unknown of an imagined life has a price.

A certainty.

Failure “will” show up.

It’s inevitable.

Turn up at your front door.

But it’s an opportunity

To learn and grow.

So….

How do you create a masterpiece?

The life skills for flourishing

What are the life skills that will help you grow, flourish and thrive.

Lifetime learning

Invest in the habit and routine of continuous life learning.

In today’s world there is one constant.

Change.

Your college degree is just a step.

The piece of paper is just a ticket.

Just a brick in the wall of your life’s work

Your masterpiece.

Ideas are one thing

But nothing happens until you take action.

Keep reading.

Listen to podcasts that challenge your thinking.

Enroll for a lifetime of education.

Invest in yourself

Your body mind and soul are not separate but intertwined.

Exercise, eat well and stop and welcome stillness.

Learn to communicate

Hone the art of listening.

Polish the art of speaking.

Confront your fears.

Grow and learn from challenging yourself.

Learn to tell better stories with your art.

Invest in your body, mind and soul.

Dare to dream

In Willy Wonka’s classic theme song “Pure Imagination” in the movie “The Chocolate Factory” the necessity for dreamers in this noisy distracted and digital world is….

Needed.

Demanded.

Required.

“Come with me, into the land of pure imagination. There is no better life than the one you can conceive. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it. Simply look around and imagine a better life. Anything you want. 

Do it.”

The essence for realizing a dream? Of creating a world of pure imagination?

It’s action.

Action

Action trumps ideas.

Nothing happens until you start.

Do something every day towards a life imagined.

Even if it just a small step.

And in those steps lies freedom.

So..

Take your dreams.

Act.

People do not think their way into change.

They act their way into change

The busyness of life will get in the way.

Reality will confront the dream.

Make you pause.

Retreat.

Withdraw

So…

Ignore the doubt and….

Start.

The only way to manifest your dreams is to take a step.

One day at a time.

Don’t overthink it. Don’t over plan it.

Choose your direction.

Cast doubt aside.

The 3 step freedom code

What is the code to freedom?

It took me many decades. Making mistakes. Stumbling.

Getting lost. Rising falling and picking myself up again.

Persisting.

What did I discover after making decisions that didn’t serve me and hanging out with people that distracted me.

Step One: Creating

I commenced my creation. Started.

A few words.

Brief online posts. 100-300 words a few times a week.

That was my art.

It was the art of creating.

That simple act of writing.

Amateur and imperfect.

But the first bricks.

Step two: Publishing

Creating is one thing but revealing it to the world is where the magic happens.

Despite the noise.

Doubt will often make you stop.

But I knew had to make my work visible.

Sharing it on the social and mobile web.

Exposing my ideas online.

Crafting headlines and growing my online social media community.

Many of us are creators.

Living in quiet anonymity.

But revealing your voice to the world has power.

So…..Take your deep work to the world.

Publish.

Step three: Flourishing

You have created and are now sharing your gift with the world.

But there is a magic that I didn’t expect.

Growing.

Connecting.

With people from all around the world.

I was being drawn into a global community that gave a me a place and a space to thrive.

As I continued to create and publish I started to “flourish.”

The 2 way conversation I had with people all around the world on my blog comments and on my social channels started to change me.

I was influencing them and they were changing me.

As I read and researched and wrote the simple WordPress blog became a publishing portal that grew in complexity.

The simple machine grew to 2,000 articles and 2 million words.

In just one decade we have had over 30 million visitors.

The world showed up.

The act of creating one day at a time had become a portfolio of work.

Deep work.

The discoveries?

I was free without gatekeepers to muffle my voice.

I didn’t have to beg the media moguls to publish.

I didn’t need to pay for attention.

But flourishing is not just a happiness path.

It is not always full of joy.

It requires a strength that only comes from a life lived.

Of stepping outside the cocoon of security.

They include….

Patience.

Persistence.

Resilience.

Hard work and grafting.

You will be tested and that is where flourishing is revealed.

Don’t wish for an easy life.

Ask for a life well lived.

Demand it.

Learn to rise when others are falling.

Grow from the pain.

The obstacles.

It is your attitude to life’s challenges that will define you.