This is blog post number 200! Cue the fireworks and open the champagne.

Two hundred.

For someone who has trouble sitting still for very long, that’s mildly impressive.

Of course, there’s another side to that. Put something interesting in front of me, and I can become so focused that, apparently, eating, sleeping, and knowing what time it is become optional.

So perhaps 200 isn’t that surprising after all.

I thought about using this post to look back.

Two hundred posts. All those words. All those ideas. Things I’ve learned. Things I’ve changed my mind about. Things I once thought I understood and now understand considerably less.

That last category seems to be growing.

But the more I thought about the number 200, the less interested I became in celebrating the number.

A different question came to me.

“If this were my last blog post, what would I want to leave you with?“

Not because I’m planning on going anywhere.

Although at my age, I’ve learned not to buy green bananas.

I simply wondered.

After nearly 200 attempts to point to something about being human, what would I say if I had only one left?

I think it might be this.

Go live your life.

Get up, go out and fully immerse yourself in your life.

Not when you’ve figured yourself out.

Not when you’re finally confident.

Not when you’ve healed everything that apparently needs healing.

Not when your thinking settles down, your relationships improve, your bank account reaches the right number, your body behaves itself, or the rest of the world finally gets its act together.

Now.

Go live now.

I spent a lot of years looking for answers

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you’ve watched me explore a lot of territory.

Leadership.

Personal development.

Mental health.

Coaching.

The Three Principles.

Innate wellbeing.

Inner Freedom.

And lately, this strange little thing I call the Thinkiverse.

I’ve read many books. Taken many courses. Sat in many conversations. Asked many questions. Challenged many assumptions. Changed my mind several times.

Yes, more than once.

I’ve spent years trying to understand how human beings work.

And after all of that, perhaps one of the most useful things I’ve discovered is that life doesn’t require our understanding before it lets us participate.

That one makes me chuckle because there was a time I felt that wasn’t so.

We can spend an extraordinary amount of our lives standing at the edge of life, trying to understand how to swim.

Meanwhile, the water is right there.

You don’t have to get yourself right first

This may be what I’d most want you to hear.

There is nothing you have to become before you’re allowed to fully participate in your own life.

You will have frightening thoughts.

Angry thoughts.

Ridiculous thoughts.

Beautiful thoughts.

Thoughts that seem incredibly important at 2:00 in the morning and slightly embarrassing over breakfast.

You’ll feel confident one day and wonder what the hell you’re doing the next.

Welcome to being human.

I’ve become less interested in whether we’re having the right experience and much more fascinated by the fact that experience moves.

It changes.

Thought changes.

Feelings change.

Our entire experience of a moment can change while the circumstances remain exactly the same.

We don’t have to supervise all of it.

We don’t have to hold a staff meeting every time our mood drops.

Sometimes we can simply notice.

And keep swimming.

Hold what you know lightly

I’ve written things over these 200 posts that I wouldn’t write the same way today.

That’s a good thing.

I’d be a little worried if I hadn’t.

Some things I once believed strongly in now look different. Other things that seemed complicated have become remarkably simple. And a few things I thought I’d figured out have returned to the increasingly respectable category of:

I don’t know.

That’s become one of my favourite answers.

Not knowing doesn’t have to stop us.

Maybe certainty isn’t the prize we thought it was.

I’ve come to appreciate curiosity much more.

What if I’m wrong?

What haven’t I seen?

What would this look like without everything I already think I know about it?

Those questions have opened more doors for me than certainty ever did.

Don’t miss the person standing in front of you

This one matters and is where I have felt my biggest change.

We live inside an extraordinary capacity to create experience.

We don’t simply see people.

We see what we think about people.

Their history with us.

What they said yesterday.

What we think they meant.

What we wish they’d done.

What we’re afraid they’ll do tomorrow.

Before long, we’re no longer having a conversation with them.

We’re having a conversation with the version of them living inside our own Thinkiverse.

Sometimes the greatest gift we can give another human being is the possibility that they might be different from who we’ve decided they are.

Maybe they won’t be.

But leave a little room.

For them.

And for yourself.

Love people

I’m not sure I can make this more sophisticated than that.

Love people.

You don’t have to agree with them.

You don’t have to understand them.

You don’t have to remain in situations where you’re being harmed.

You don’t have to approve of someone’s behaviour to recognize the human being underneath it.

Love isn’t weakness.

And it certainly isn’t naïveté.

Sometimes love embraces.

Sometimes love listens.

Sometimes love says no.

Sometimes love walks away.

But if I had to choose between being right and remembering our shared humanity, I hope I’d remember our shared humanity more often.

I’m still practising.

Stop saving yourself for later

Wear the shirt.

Take the trip.

Call your sister.

Eat the dessert.

Say I love you.

Sit with your Dad.

Get on the boat.

Write the book.

Make the ridiculous video.

Dance badly.

Sing off-key.

Laugh loudly.

Change your mind.

Start something you’re completely unqualified to start.

And occasionally leave the damn dishes in the sink.

There will always be dishes.

There won’t always be a Tuesday.

Life isn’t a rehearsal for something coming later.

This is the thing.

Not every moment will feel wonderful.

It isn’t supposed to.

A full life contains all of it.

Joy.

Grief.

Fear.

Wonder.

Boredom.

Loss.

Love.

Confusion.

Laughter.

And Tuesdays when absolutely nothing profound happens.

You don’t need to turn every experience into a lesson.

Sometimes Tuesday can just be Tuesday.

And perhaps most of all…

Don’t be too afraid of your own experience.

That’s something I wish more people knew.

A feeling can feel enormous without being permanent.

A thought can sound convincing without being true.

A moment can look hopeless without knowing anything about the moment coming next.

There is something remarkably resilient about us.

Life keeps moving.

Thought keeps moving.

Experience keeps moving.

And underneath all the noise, something in us seems to know how to find its way home when we stop insisting on giving it directions.

I’ve spent much of these 200 posts trying to find different ways of pointing toward that.

Maybe I could have saved everyone some reading.

But then I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun.

So, if this really were the last one…

Thank you.

For reading.

For questioning.

For disagreeing.

For sending me notes saying something landed.

For telling me when something didn’t.

For allowing me to think out loud in public, while occasionally discovering that what I thought yesterday wasn’t quite as brilliant as it seemed.

Two hundred posts haven’t given me 200 answers.

They’ve probably given me more questions.

I’m good with that.

Because perhaps life was never asking us to figure it out.

Perhaps it has simply been inviting us to experience it.

To participate.

To love.

To fall down.

To get back up.

To wonder.

To laugh.

To occasionally make a complete ass of ourselves.

And to keep going.

So if these were the last words I ever got to leave here, I think they’d be remarkably simple:

You don’t have to understand your life before you live it.

You’re already in the water.

Keep swimming.

And see where life takes you.

Much Love,