Top 4 things I learned from 2015

1. Getting Out Of Bed.
Being able to get out of bed unassisted and healthy is a gift more golden than any fairytale can muster. I am still working on regaining my full physical aptitude. Recovering from open-heart surgery was a humbling journey for me. For a very long time I could not sit up or get out of bed without help. We can easily take our health and strength for granted, until it scurries off out of our reach and we realise the blessing that being healthy truly is. Get out of bed everyday, put one foot in front of the other and relish the fact that you are still here.

2. Bellybuttons Are Scars.
After nearly four decades on this planet, I have only very recently come to the full realization that belly buttons are scars. We humans all have one.* We are all the same. Whenever I feel impatient or annoyed by another person I think about what their bellybutton looks like. It immediately makes me feel kinder because belly buttons are silly looking and we all have one. *(Except for those few people who don’t have a bellybutton for whatever reason. For that I am sorry and you can borrow mine)

3. We Can Change.
I once drank 3 dirty vodka martinis and then took a cycle fitness class many years ago. It was pretty much the worst hour, during which I was fairly certain that I would expire. I knew it was ill-advised but the folly of my youth had few limits. This is not something I ever repeated because I learned and changed. On a larger and far less dirty vodka martini quenched trail, we humans seem to forget this simple blessing. In every second of life we have the choice, to change. To change how we feel, how we react, what we say, how we treat others, how we treat our collective home on this planet. Sometimes the most crippling of hurdles is our own inner voice that suggests that we can’t. But everyday is a choice and that choice belongs to us.

4. Temporary is Good.
Despite how persuasive the carousel of negative thoughts trying to take root in my mind is – I am not my thoughts. I am bigger, better, faster and more than they are. In some way everything ends. Nothing is here forever. (Except the earth’s magma core – and really who knows what is going on down there anyway?) Good things end and Bad things end. Sometimes we know when to turn the page and sometimes it turns for us. But these last few years are teaching me to Trust in the power that things will work out. They always do, one way or another. So bring it on 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and beyond…