Every year when the clock strikes my birthday I look back at a year and see what happened.
What changed, what transformed, what is in process, what amazing things happened and, most importantly, what did I really learn?
The last 12 months have been an exercise in resilience and flexibility. Whether it was turning my home into a broadcasting studio last-minute or learning to lean into the unexpected, nearly burning out because I temporarily lost site of the big picture… and experiencing more personal growth than I had ever anticipated in the process…
I had to crank up the dial on my ability to adapt all year long. I thought I was great at being resourceful, but I had no idea of all the untapped capacity I had and how much I’d be tested.
That said, as I type this today with incredible gratitude, there’s a lot I can share that I hope can be helpful whether you read this now or find it five years from now if you’re leaning into big personal growth.
Strength is multi-dimensional and important on every level.
This was a year where I learned my personal conflict with the idea of being “strong.” Growing up, I saw people who were told every day “how strong they are”, but they were being praised for putting up with abuse, dealing with needless drama and wading through a lot of suffering they didn’t need to suffer through. I never realized that I equated being “strong” with all of this turmoil.
Strong is also: strong in personal boundaries, strong in wisdom, physically strong, strong in personal values, strong in endurance and determination that’s positive…
And all that strength– every ounce of it– adds up to major power.
Being physically stronger is a big priority for me, but it moves hand in hand with having stronger focus and stronger intention.
Lean into the strengths you have and build greater strength in areas of your life that might get less attention as you grow!
Expanding the scope of personal wellness can serve you well.
Personal wellness can feel very much like an endless checklist of things to optimize if you aren’t defining wellness for yourself.
Wellness got very personal this year.
It was ironic to discover that the one thing that was making me feel unwell was… a handful of expensive, fancy vitamins I was taking!
The big wellness lesson hit me when my friend celebrated her grandmas’s 104th birthday and told me that her grandma eats ice cream every day (non-organic, not fancy), big slices of chocolate cake and other vilified foods as part of her daily life. She also eats a varied, balanced diet.
Her wellness came from living in her best ways, developing a life she loved and not worrying about what other people thought about it.
She’s still making art today.
A new level of organization can be a huge personal glow up.
Organizing was always a big part of my life, but this year I trashed all my unread emails (10’s of thousands), shredded old journals (about 15 of them), bought organizing systems for closets and drawers, the bathroom, the office…
And, as a result, so many people said I “looked” different. I certainly feel different. My mind is in a new frame of order.
I wasn’t disorganized to begin with. But, there was a level of order I needed to catapult myself to a new level of effectiveness.
Better said: a new level of joy.
Look for momentum, not just “achievement.”
I’m all for finishing things, but after joining a class and then a bootcamp atop the class to try to artificially motivate myself to get a project done– I realized that there was no coach that was going to make this move faster than my timeline and priorities.
Because I “failed” to finish it for so long I started to double down and force this onto my to-do list… but I didn’t have the time or energy to commit to the finish line. So, I avoided it completely and pushed it off, months into the future…
Then, I started working on it incrementally. One piece done, another and another… and, soon, I found momentum.
It’s not done yet, but it’s now fun, and it’s actually getting done!
Enjoy the journey more without everything being so serious.
There are many things that require a more sober and serious approach. That said, if everything is this serious and intense, you might find that nothing gets done that has an infusion of magic in it. The color gets drained out by all that tension.
Lightening up A LOT is actually far more prosperous and magnetic.
I saw a lot of my overly-serious approach to life start melting away more during The Cash Camp this past Spring, and it opened the doors to a lot of prosperity! (*Cash Camp is back again this Fall because it’s an awesome time to prosper! The FREE Wealth Feng Shui videos kick things off right HERE!)
Say “yes” to the things you can’t stop thinking about.
I needed to learn a few things that required training, some equipment and a lot of investment. I say I needed them because I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
I used to sit on the sidelines and put these things off for sometime in the future, but I was tired of sidelining my life and I’m so happy to have made that big switch!
If you want it, find a way to do it. It is always possible.
Innovate. Innovate and don’t stop innovating.
Simple. You can’t do the same things and expect different results. Be fresh, experiment and innovate. The entire School of Intention Professional Feng Shui Training is built on innovation.
Everything I do was once an experiment.
Some experiments work, some don’t… and some might become the greatest dreams you’ve ever had.
I still can’t believe that I have the honor of doing this work every day in impossibly cool ways, considering it all started as a passion project!
Faith — whether in yourself, a higher power, the goodness of humanity– is incredibly stabilizing.
Trusting myself has allowed me to weather many storms and create enormous breakthroughs.
Forgive yourself for all your past lapses in judgement or parts of your growing process that were messy. Now is a new unit of time.
Your inner guidance can move you to greater heights than you ever imagined if you trust yourself.
Cooperation is so much more powerful than competition.
While sharing her experience of The School of Intention a student said something I won’t forget– she was surprised that there were no “secrets” that I kept from students and that I was willing to do anything I could to advance everyone’s careers. She was used to teachers holding back and keeping secrets so that no one could become a competitor.
I want my students to have all the success in the world and there’s no room for competition. It’s wasted energy. It’s scarcity.
Championing the success of others has been an enormous joy for me this year and I feel like I’m just getting warmed up to all the ways I can be of service.
There’s a lot of love in the world to connect to every day.
When people are divided, complaining, angry, frustrated, yelling, snarky, downright irrational… it’s easy to lose sight of all the love in every day.
Rather that engaging in the divide, this year I chose to have a broader perspective, to be more quiet, to listen and understand more… and, to extricate myself from these tensions in the process.
It was important to remind myself that there’s so much love in the world, and I want to connect more to that love. I don’t need to win fights, I want to learn, to experience, to connect, to expand.
Find that compassion in every day– and look for more ways to show love to all the people who love you so much. Send cards, messages, plan adventures, drop off coffee… the little things that can be enormous things.
This kind of connection is really the beauty and greatest personal success I know.
Stay open, stay excited and embrace all the growth that you can experience today!
xoxo
Dana
P.S.: The Cash Camp is coming soon.
It’s eight weeks of fortune- building Feng Shui to get your money in order & your wealth growing!
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