Sometimes falling on your face is the best way to grow as a person. One of the things you may have noticed is that I haven’t been posting here regularly for quite some time. The reason for this is that this site was my first attempt to create a blog. Soon after launching it, I realized I had made a lot of mistakes in how I set it up…
I love meeting new people. I’m always excited to hear about their lives – about what they have done in the past, what they are doing now, and what they have planned for their future. Each person has an interesting story and features that are make them so unique. I also love trying to figure out what their special gift is…
The thing that I have realized of late though is that I see people totally differently than they see themselves. When I meet a person for the first time, I see them as their superhero version. Usually as I get to know a person, I find that they don’t often share this vision of themselves of having so much inherent value and so much to contribute to make the world a better place.
Have you ever found a book that really resonates with you? Through a series of serendipitous events, I happened upon a great book that seemed to be written just for me: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. In the book, Jeff Olson talks about the way in which successful people become successful. He asserts that one person is no different from another and that anyone can become successful. In his view, the difference between those who become successful and those who don’t, however, is that successful people practice simple disciplines persistently and consistently over time that lead them along the path to success.
If there is one thing I have learned in my life (and mainly through sports) it’s that what you think is what you create and who you become. High performance athletes are trained to control their thoughts and practice positive affirmations daily.
I often speak to my kids about the importance of using positive words and self-talk to help them succeed at challenges they’re facing. The other day we were in the playground and my 4-year-old daughter told me that she couldn’t climb up the rope ladder. I told her that she just needed to say to herself: “I can do it! I can do it! I can do it!” As we chanted this mantra together, she managed to climb the rope ladder all by herself (and you should have seen the look of pride on her face!)
During the last ten years that it took me to complete my PhD (yes…that’s right, it took me ten years!), every book and article that I read related to my PhD topic. The good thing is that I am really passionate about Aboriginal law and almost everything I read on that topic fuelled my passion and sparked new ideas for me. The bad thing is that I wasn’t able to read anything else – no fiction, no self-development books, no biographies… So now I am really enjoying getting back to reading other books!
If you had told me that I should deliberately schedule time for myself a couple of years ago, I would have looked at you like you were bonkers. When my kids were young, I felt like there was no time for me at all. As a new Mom, I could hardly even find time to shower and I felt like I needed toothpicks to keep my eyes open most of the time. Now as a working parent with many things on the side, I still struggle to find time for myself.
At a conference focusing on Indigenous legal traditions at McGill Law School this past weekend, I reconnected with a lovely, accomplished law professor that I hadn’t seen for awhile and asked her how her law teaching was going. She told me that although she is now very comfortable in her job, as a full-time working mother of two young kids, she is feeling overwhelmed, isolated, and feels like she is just trying to get through each day as it comes.
Today I saw my naturopath and good friend, Dr. Meghan Walker. Meghan is somewhat of a legend – she has her own naturopathic practice, she is the CEO of a start-up and is a busy mother of young children. She is one of the most successful people I know and she always has a million balls in the air…so when she gives me tips, I listen.
I met with a friend of mine for coffee last week. I hadn’t seen her since university and it was so great to catch up. She’s an amazing person – the kind of person that walks in the room and everybody notices. She is tall, stylish, and looks like a model. Even more importantly, she’s intelligent, funny, humble, and super cool – the kind of person that makes you think: “How is she so cool? I wish I could be that cool.”
Recently, I watched a great talk by a multi-million dollar earner in my company who talked about the power of a dream board. He has a rags to riches story. He talked about how, as a time of extreme debt, he created a dream board about owning a vacation property in Hawaii and even brought sand from Hawaii to his office. He downloaded Hawaiian music and surrounded himself with pictures of Hawaii and his dream property. Sure enough…this dream board helped propel him to continue making his business profitable and he ended up buying that dream property within several years.
Kirsten Manley-Casimir, PhD 