What's your legacy?

What’s your legacy? Have you ever thought about what’s most important to you to leave behind… for your family? Your friends? Your community? What are you cultivating now that is your offering to the world?

When considering this recently, the Buddha’s words came to me.

This about sums it up for me. Let’s break it down together.

1. How much you loved.

Love is the most potent medicine that exists. It heals, softens, enlightens, teaches, nurtures, calls forth our highest selves. It crosses borders. It transforms fear. It sheds light on darkness. It brings hope. Peace. And it’s universal. It doesn’t know skin color, gender, religion, beliefs, or status. It’s an elixir of wisdom and strength that we all have access to — because we’re made of it.

What would it look like to move with love this week? To view everything in your life — your circumstances, relationships, your work, your body — through the lens of love? When something is challenging, can you love it anyway?

This is a practice. This is why the physical practice of yoga (asana) is so valuable for personal development. Because when a posture gets challenging (and we really want to get out of it), we have an opportunity to stay. To choose love. To love it anyway, even when it’s hard. What a gift, this ability. A gift that only comes from commitment, consistency, and discipline.

Let choosing love — in all that you do — be a practice this week.

2. How gently you lived.

We all make a footprint on this world. Every action you take is a step. But how are you taking those steps?

How do you carry yourself? What attitude do you embody throughout the day? How present are you with things that arise around you? Within you? How do you speak to your neighbor? Your colleagues? Your partner? What is your tone of voice when delivering your message?

How gently we live is about embodiment. It’s about how we take what we learn in practice and share it with the world. When we lead by example — when we tread lightly, kindly (because our spirit is lighter from doing The Work) — it is felt by others, and it is felt by the Earth, too.

What would it look like for you to live gently this week? I invite you to start with yourself. What would being gentle with yourself look like this week?

3. How gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

Woosh. This one’s a doozy. Don’t you agree? I feel like my whole life has been a journey of letting go of things not meant for me… people, places, habits, learned behaviors, past conditioning. Beliefs that no longer serve.

The biggest one for me lately has been alcohol. I let it go on April 16th, 2023. Coming up on a year of sobriety has been eye-opening, to say the least. Letting go of this one thing has been both the hardest — and easiest — thing, ever. Not hard in that I crave it — because I actually don’t, at all (and I’m so grateful for that) — but hard in that it took me a lot of years to get to the point of being ready to let it go, and I realize some people never get to that point.

And it comes back to that first thing, y’all… love.

Over the years, I’ve learned to love myself first. To put my dreams and goals at the top of my priority list. To fiercely make time and space to tend to my own healing, to feel lighter, to align more closely to my purpose work, and allow myself to shed all things that get in the way of what matters most to me in this life.

When I started practicing yoga in 2009, I had no idea this practice would bring so many gifts to my life. But now I see. And this ability to let go — to identify when something isn’t working for me anymore — to see what I need to do to course-correct — this self-awareness… has only come with practice.

Courage and bravery result. And they are necessary in consciously creating our lives. We have to be brave and courageous to trust our Inner Knowing — to dive into spaces and situations that we know we need to experience, but don’t know why.

Go inward daily. Listen. Trust yourself. And act accordingly.

Love yourself. Tread lightly. And keep shedding your layers — letting go of what no longer serves you — until you are 100% you and only you.

Because that is what the world needs. You.

This week’s practice is my latest guided meditation. Join me for just four minutes to start your day from a grounded, empowered mental space.