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Hi Friends!

Here is your weekly digest of “High Five Friday,” a list of things that are adding value to my life or capturing my attention this week.


1. What I'm Celebrating: TODAY I am celebrating the very first day my Wife and I met SIX years ago and the love and dedication we've given to creating a beautiful life together everyday since. My life changed December 14th, 2012 when I got a text from an unknown phone number saying, "Hi, this is your new friend, Maggie. You should come out with us tonight." *insert 3 dancing girl emojis here* Who could pass that up?! 

I quickly put on some makeup, my red high heels, black skinny jeans, a brown sleeveless shirt and showed up to the bar my new friend Maggie and our mutual friends were at. We danced, we told stories, we got drinks overlooking the city, we ate VooDoo donuts at 1am, and we laughed so hard we cried. When the night was over, I drove Maggie to her car and told her to text me when she...

Hi Friends!

Here is your weekly digest of “High Five Friday,” a list of things that are adding value to my life or capturing my attention this week.

1. What Is Changing My Work Life -- For the last year or so, Maggie and I tried to work together in the same office and I'm just too distracted by basically everything. So, I took my desk on wheels over to another room with a white board, a headset and my laptop and I get. to. work! I have been loving the time and space I get to accomplish my own to-do's. Since Maggie and I both work from home most of the time, we had to create a system to indicate when we needed to not to be interrupted. So, we put our items out in front of our office doors... Maggie's is a Holga camera and mine is a "You Matter" hat that I hang on the door knob. When either of those are on display, we know not to disturb each other. We also communicate when we are planning to end our workdays and amazingly, we...

Hi Friends!

Here is your weekly digest of “High Five Friday,” a list of things that are adding value to my life or capturing my attention this week.

1. What I'm Reading -- I've literally just cracked the pages on the New York Times Bestseller, "Girl, Wash Your Face" by Rachel Hollis. I'm super excited about this book because I dig things created by awesome people changing the world. Maggie met Rachel and her husband, Dave, at an event she was photographing and confirmed they're both fantastic human beings. Yessss. 
   
   
   

2. What I'm Watching -- My Wife and I just finished binge watching season 2 of  "Making A Murderer" on Netflix. My propensity toward social justice and fairness made this show a fascinating unveiling of our judicial system. At the point that we can learn and be curious despite which side we're on, is where change and understanding is made. Watching shows with such high stakes like this one, is a steady reminder of the...

(Above Photo: my 24th birthday with my friends, Bri and Kelsey. I had secured my dream job traveling the country working as the Director of Operations and Leadership Coach for an image consulting and corporate training company. I felt like a badass, and I thought I looked pretty good, too.)

Lately I've been thinking about my younger self and what she knew about life. There were  certain things I did, beliefs, habits and ways of being that got me where I am. In my teens and early 20's I filled my mind with personal development, positivity, and coaching. It helped me overcome my tendencies toward perfection, depression and the medical challenges and surgeries that I faced. My walls were filled with quotes and reminders. My mirrors, with affirmations on sticky notes, and my notebooks with goals I set out to do that month, quarter or year.


I got most everything I wanted.


I got the dream jobs, the perfect clients, the next brilliant steps in my career. When I...

© 2018 Maggie Kirkland. Photography by my extraordinarily talented Wife.
 

Lately I’ve been healing, deconstructing and understanding the things that hold me back. The last couple of years have felt stagnant and unfulfilling in many ways for me. I’ve felt it a couple of times previously in life, but I’m still not used to it. It’s uncomfortable and maddening. It surprises me, though I guess it shouldn’t come as any surprise really at all.

It happens when I listen too much to what’s “out there” and not to myself. It happens when people criticize, undervalue or belittle me. Ugh. I let other people get in my head, rattle my thoughts and eventually run my life. It’s weird how that happens, isn’t it? We go along and all of the sudden we wake up one day realizing we’ve let someone else’s beliefs, anger, hurt or agendas become ours. Oh god is it ever uncomfortable.

It is...

(This stunning photo was captured by Maggie Kirkland)

I asked myself “How do I write more consistently” and then my brain answered:

“You just do.”

Valid point.

My goal during the coming months is to share short meanderings and curiosities about life via my blog to get back in the flow of organic and authentic writing.

Writing that doesn’t have a destination.

Writing that tickles the curiosities of the soul.

The kind of writing that transports me in time and thrusts me into a magical sort of flow state that I love feeling.


I’ve committed myself to doing things with greater consistency and the only way to do things consistently is by actually PLANNING for them… So I’ll be dedicating the first waking hour of my day to writing these blog posts. No more and no less than an hour. I find that if I push myself to write MORE, I burn out and end up not wanting to write the next day. I...

It’s finally time.

I’ve spent 2+ years and every single coaching session with my Coach this year talking about “writing more for myself.”


And by “more” I mean AT ALL.

Now it’s just annoying.

Why do I refuse to write like I used to? That’s perhaps my greatest question. Maybe I feel I don’t deserve it. I feel like I should be making money not writing about life. Like it has to lead somewhere important and valuable or it’s not worth doing. But writing about life is how I learn, how I contribute, and how I understand the world -- and myself.

Writing IS my currency.

When we first met, Maggie used to say she could feel the energy in the house change when I was writing and she loved it. There was a sort of magic about it. I miss that. I can tell she does, too.

When I stopped writing a couple of years ago, it was difficult not to write at first, but then, like all habits, I got used to...

Hi Friends!

Here is your weekly dose of “High Five Friday,” a list of things that are adding value to my life or capturing my attention this week.

1. What I'm Reading -- My wife and I are currently focusing our attention on leveling up our financial game. Neither of us grew up with a strong understanding of money, how to have it work for us, how to invest, or even how to fully value ourselves. We confided in our friend, Carla, and she shared an incredibly powerful book to help us on our journey (thank you, Carla!!!). We are LOVING this book (even taking turning reading it so we can both soak it up!) I hope this book helps you too: Worthy: Boost Your Self-Worth To Grow Your Net Worth by Nancy Levin. 
   
   
   

2. What I'm Watching -- This week I had a realization that about 5 years ago, I abandoned many of the tools, habits, hacks and rituals that got me to some of the BEST places in my life. I grew up listening to self-improvement tapes, attending...

 (Breathtaking photo captured by Maggie Kirkland | www.honey-photo.com) 

We live in such an incredible time. We can literally live and work anywhere in the world and make a living. There has been no other time quite like this where the only limit to our experience is our ideas, our beliefs and our commitment to making it happen. Many people are feeling pulled to adventure. To travel and explore the world around us. We’re pushing the limits of the stable job, the 8-5, and living in the same place for our entire life.

So the question is, what would it look like for you to live your life of your own terms?

 
Pull out your journal or a piece of paper and complete the following questions:

1. What do you value most in life?

2. What are your deal breakers? (these are things that if they happened, you would be done … be it with your job, your relationship, your career)

3. What are you tolerating right now?


4. What would your...