03/ 11/ 2018
You may have noticed that I didn’t post February’s Lessons from Somewhere. At the end of the month, I didn’t feel I learned anything worth sharing. February felt like a cycle of waking up and working, then trying to find time to do the things that are most important to me, but feeling too exhausted to actually do them.
It took some reflection to realize, but I did, in fact, learn something in February. The truth is that I’ve felt useless lately. I’ve written about this before in different ways: feeling bored or like I’ve like peaked in life. But I woke up several times in February questioning if I was doing anything meaningful or making a difference, and I kept coming up with the same answer: no.
We’re nearly halfway through March at this point, and this morning, I saw an Instagram Story from one of my favorite famous people Amanda de Cadenet, Founder and CEO of Girl Gaze Project and The Conversation (side note: I loved her beautifully honest book It’s Messy: On Boys, Boobs, and Badass Women). In her Story, she said:
“So I was asked by a participant to share one of the women who inspires me. First of all, there are so many, but second of all, I realized that it’s actually really important to inspire yourself. So if you’re not inspired by you, don’t expect anyone else to be. Be the leading woman in your own life.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard about the importance of being a leading lady in your own life (thank you, The Holiday). But hearing Amanda remind me that I need to inspire myself felt like a real wake up call. I don’t want to feel like I’m just coasting through my life, I want to actually do something meaningful with my time on this planet.
Amanda’s story has re-framed the inspiration question for me, which I think will inform how I can feel more useful. It’s not a question of what inspires me or how I can inspire others, but more about discovering how I am going to inspire myself.
And that’s where I’ll leave this today, as that will take some thought to answer.
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