What 3 Lessons Am I Taking Into 2023?

The last twelve months have been filled with new experiences, challenges and opportunities and not only am I still standing I'm actually a better person for them.... and as with everything in life there is always lessons to be learnt..... So here they are, the 3 lessons I'm taking with me as we head into 2023.

”The only way to do great work is to love what you do,” Steve Jobs

If you ask me why I love my job, I could go on and on about how mental health is my passion, how rewarding it is to make a real difference in people's lives or how I believe it is what I am here to do.... My Purpose. I feel genuinely fortunate to make a living where I can use my own journey with mental health to help others and be surrounded by good, decent, like-minded people that focus on empowerment and lifting people up.

It wasn't always like this though, and like many others I did jobs purely because "they paid the bills".... For 10 long years I worked in cooperate offices tapping numbers into a spreadsheet for 9 hours a day and I can tell you the difference between the 2 is life changing.

As soon as I discovered that personal connection to what I did a job stopped being a job and Ultimately, it’s about our time and how we choose to spend it so why choose to spend it doing something we hate?

My personal life over the last few years has changed quite a lot, specifically the people in it and although I'm not totally comfortable with all the changes I've made I do understand the reasons behind them.

The reason was a realization I made that the people in my life, both family and friends might not always want the best for me and that often they would bring out the worst in me..... And if this was true, I had to ask myself what impact it was having on my life?

Well..... Nothing good that's for damn sure.

So a decision was made to focus on quality and not quantity. If I wanted to succeed and be happy both professionally and personally I needed to be surrounded by those that also wanted that... so regardless of the self doubt and loneliness I felt I slowly started letting the bad ones drift away to focus on the good ones..... the good eggs.

Happiness has only been a recent thing for me and although I can't relate to my life being miserable me really being at peace with myself has only been a recent process. For a large part of my life I've been seen by some, and party by myself as a disappointment.... A guy of wasted opportunities looking in from the outside desperate to feel part of something.... To feel connected to something. What I now realize though is that I was never looking for acceptance from others I was looking for acceptance from myself.

......And in this process of understanding and accepting myself I have found health, happiness, meaning and purpose allowing me to look past people's judgments and expectations to carve my own path in life.

I know who I am now and why I'm here and I'm not afraid to show it, and ironically, after everything I ended up finding connection and acceptance of others.

Remember life is our creation to make so dream big and keep going.

Rob xx