Here’s something I realized today. Let’s say I get to have a cup of energy every day. It’s like a glass full of water and I get to sip it with each person, each meeting, each email or whatever. I get to decide who or what gets how much from the cup.

But here’s what I don’t get to decide: I don’t get to have endless cups or endless “water.” The cup is a specific size and it starts full most mornings and it doesn’t get a refill during the day. So it’s all I get to have.

If I use it up by 10am, that’s all there is and no one or nothing gets to have any when the cup is empty.

So, knowing that, it’s important for me to make sure that I am intentional in how I use my “water” for the day.

If I want to live inside out, honoring my values, well I’d better distribute the water so most of it goes towards the people and things that are aligned with my values.

If I care the full amount about everything ( which I, sadly, often do ) then I am living life as if there is a bottomless cup or infinite cups.

There isn’t.

So this is my lesson of the day.

This might already be obvious to others but it wasn’t to me. I know this to be true about time and I generally use my time very intentionally but until today I didn’t really consider this to be true about my energy and my worry. I am anxious about all the things and all the times, and, well that doesn’t work.

So now I will imagine a cup every morning and as I move through my day I will be careful about when and how I use up what’s in it.

Yes to being intentional.

#yearofyes #karenikayearofyes

When the kids were young, I used to tickle them during family photos to get some genuine laughs.

As they got bigger and stronger, they got better at stopping me so I had to devise a better strategy to ensure we didn’t end up with a bunch of fake smiles.

We start our sessions with smiles, and then do a bunch of faces (sad face, angry face, shocked face, etc.) And then we start to fake laugh. I told the kids that the camera can’t tell when you’re fake laughing so we fake it.

And the camera can’t tell.

But here’s the best part: a few seconds into the fake laughing we start laughing for real. We can’t help it. The whole thing feels so absurd that we start laughing and laughing and laughing.

And the camera captures those too.

Sometimes faking it till you make it is the best strategy after all.

Yes to laughter.

#yearofyes #karenikayearofyes

Played with lots of paint today while I listened to a good book. Painting, journaling, reading. These things never get old for me.

I am so grateful to the people who fill our lives with stories to read, stories to watch, they create worlds we can live in however briefly and let us peek into other worlds.

How magical is that?

Yes to celebrating storytellers.

#yearofyes #karenikayearofyes