Where’s my Blankie?

As a kid we had something in our lives that made it easier to venture out or even come back to for refueling. Something like a blanket, a parent or that shirt that was worn way too much. As we’ve gotten older, it comes out in other forms like a partner, a job, a habit, or even a way of acting socially.

The real challenge is to identify this “blanket” so that we can continue to purposely behave in a way that we are vulnerable. In those moments of being exposed, that’s where magical territories await. The place where the most growth happens in our personalities.

There are times in which you’ve seen someone or something and thought, “I’d like to do that” or “I admire that quality he/she has. I wish I could do that.”  Well, right there is the moment when the security blanket is evident. It’s a frame of mind that you, me and everyone else around us has. But it’s when we meet the most special people that we start to get comfortable with the idea of who we really want to be.

Someone once told us in passing that it’s not what happens to you in life, it’s who. Thinking of this comment later on, we reflected on the influence of relationships we’ve had along the way. Boy, we can say that looking back and connecting the pieces we are grateful, now we get it. Family relations, intimate relations, and friendly relations all alike; every relationship had its role. But it’s when the blanket is dropped that you start to meet the special people that help shape you. It’s the moments when you are naked that you are vulnerable, where you really start to feel the change. Knowing this and letting our vulnerabilities show becomes a challenge but we have the ability to learn, change, adapt and innovate.

Now the “start-up” is you, with all the resources available and all you have to do is put in the effort. You don’t need to worry about failing anymore as long as you’re failing forward; because from making mistakes you can still win.

You can see examples of this throughout the history of our civilizations. Sharing of information to building technologies, forever churning the quality of life for the better. For us traveling we are looking around our environments whether in Japan, Indonesia, Thailand or right here and now, we have everything we could ever ask for and all we had to do is be born in this great time. Thanks mom and dad!

So the hardness of life isn’t prehistoric anymore. We don’t have to hunt our food, we don’t have to build our houses and we have clean water available with minimal effort. So now the hardness of life lies in the mind of us all. Our own brains have a huge capacity for whatever it is that we want out of life, we just need to allow ourselves to get a little uncomfortable.

Coming back to the point though, we can now put things into perspective. Who is it you want to be and is your security blanket holding you back?  How can you put yourself out on purpose so that you live on purpose? Be vulnerable to have conversations and stop hiding because sooner or later you’ll be looking back and wish you did more with your time.