How To Do An Annual Review

As the last few days of the year trickle into view, it’s a time when we naturally think about what has gone on in the past year and review the time that we have spent. Has it been used wisely or are there things you wish you'd done differently?

Why Do A Year-End Review?

We are all driven by a sense of progress. If you’re anything like me, the end of the year becomes a time when you get the urge to reflect back on the year that has passed and look towards what the future holds in the New Year. Sure, we can just as readily set new goals on December 1 as we can on January 1, but this crossing of the threshold as we start a new year holds archetypal significance for us and the journey we follow throughout our life.

 To make sense of the bigger picture of our life story, we need to delineate chapters which is why the year-end review can help with this process.

What gets included in a year-end review is up to you based on your priorities. But if you're trying to get started with doing an annual review for the first time or find something better that works for you, here are some recommended starting points that I find most useful. 

Deep Health Review

While there are many ways to evaluate our life, one of the most impactful to me is to look through the deep health lens to get a clear picture of what our overall health and the different aspects looked like and how they have changed in the past year.
Because our health is multi-faceted, it really makes a difference to look at a deep health framework to understand what is going well in your life and what needs more work and focus to get back on track.
Doing your Deep Health review with the Deep Heath Questionnaire doesn’t just have to be done once per year. It’s also helpful to use whenever you face changes or set new goals during the year.

Complete a deep health questionnaire and compare it to past scores. Click this link to download a copy.

What Areas Make Up Your Life?

If you listen to any self-help guru out there, they will have their own framework for the different dimensions of your life. Like the Deep Health complete picture, these are the slices of the pie of life that we consider when evaluating the current moment of our life and the time frame we have been through.
Some systems will give you 10 sections, others 6, or maybe as little as 4. However you want to evaluate your experiences, I think somewhere between 6-8 is ideal so that you can get a full picture of things like work satisfaction, relationships, finances, and experiences, as well as deep health components like spiritual health and mental health.
Consider where you're currently at with these slices of your life. Looking at where you’ve come from over the past year will help you to appreciate the progress that you have made.

Review Your Calendar and Notes

If you don’t keep track of at least some of the ways you spend your time in your calendar or note-taking in a journal, now is a good time to start.
By having the thoughts and experiences of your life captured in the moment, you are keeping a much more permanent record of the stories you are creating. Anytime I feel like I haven’t had enough fun experiences or accomplished enough for myself, I scroll back through my calendar and the notes I’ve captured and can see more clearly the progress there. And so it helps you to look back through all these moments to get that overview of your year as you review it. 

• What were the highlight moments or experiences?

• What were some of the best things you accomplished?

• What challenges did you face?

All of these questions that you can review when looking back through your notes will help you to hold yourself accountable when you think about what the next year looks like for you.

More things to take note of as you review your notes from each month this year:

• What new places did you visit?

• Who did you meet and what relationships did you build?

• What new skills did you acquire?

Books You’ve Read

Another category I use when reviewing my year is to see what books I read. I used to do this out of competitiveness to see how many books I read which is why I stopped using GoodReads as consistently to track books. But GoodReads makes it so simple to rate and record any books I've read and gives me a glance at the timeline in books for the year. 

Books are an important category to review because along with any notes you’ve taken in journals or just what you’ve written down as lessons you’ve learned through the years, books tell you more about what you were curious about and wanted to learn in the past year. This is particularly true if you do read non-fiction and are trying to learn and acquire new skills with the books you choose to read.

Progress For What Comes Next.

No matter what you review and how you evaluate your annual review, it’s important to look at each year as a stepping stone and progress forward toward bigger goals. We will always encounter obstacles and setbacks along the way.

So as you take the time to close out the year this weekend, look back on what has happened for you in the last twelve months so that you can better prepare for where your journey takes you next.

How Ready Are You for Change? (And Using Float Tanks to Help)

When Dr. John C. Lilly, the inventor of the float tank, entered into the darkness and solitude of the sensory-deprived environment, it sparked in him the realization that he had just ventured into a whole other world inside of himself.

Our brain rings out in response to this lack of input from the external world like a wake-up call.

Turning inward allows us to raise our self-awareness and with that, we can start to transform ourselves.

Change awaits us.

And that’s exactly what we’re all longing for right now.

The Changes We Seek To Make

What is life going to look like on the other side of lockdown restrictions?

Are you ready for a change or are you already taking steps to make changes in your life?

While there has been a lot that isn't under our control lately, something that is in our sphere of control at all times is our actions and choosing to become more aware of how we make use of the time we have. The past year has shifted the regular routines for many of us and opened our eyes to the need for change.

We get stuck in our routines and what we are used to because it's familiar and becomes automatically ingrained as a habit. Kind of like how we pull into our driveway after a long day of work only to realize that we were barely conscious of the drive home, unless we are actively trying to identify and understand our habits they will take control before even we know what we are doing. This includes the bad habits that we may be thinking about changing or feel really ready to take a stand against.

Float tanks can help you with making change by allowing you to focus on and understand your bad habits through deep introspection. This can also help you to understand the underlying motives behind the new habits you are trying to create change from.

When creating and refining the first float tanks, Dr. John C. Lily used the quiet isolation of that environment to develop a system around how to alter unwanted behaviours. He used this safe and controlled environment to focus on the negative aspects of bad habits and their underlying source.

Knowing yourself at this deeper level is one of the first steps to making long-lasting changes for the better.

What Is Your Goal?

Because we are creatures of habit, we all long for some return to normal in our lives. We get distressed when our routines are upset and we’ve all been experiencing some not so gentle disruptions to our routines over the past year.

Disruptions, like the ones we’ve experienced, do have an upside though, because it causes a degree of discomfort that makes us motivated to change. Whether we like it or not, the hiccup in our routine that has been the pandemic is something of a catalyst for change and the initiation of your mission if you choose to accept it.

Rebuild It Better

We can rebuild our lives in the way that we so desire and this past year has been a wake-up call for many who have wanted to make a change for some time. People have retired early and set off on new adventures, many others are quitting jobs they are unsatisfied with and analysts believe that a mass exodus from unhappy jobs is still coming as we move into the post-pandemic world.

Right now you have the opportunity to ask yourself, how do you want to rebuild?

Why not build a lifestyle that’s better than before? One that gets you excited to jump up out of bed in the morning.

Floating Your Way To Deeper Understanding

Dr. Lily was a different thinker in many ways, even by academic standards. Some of his work was related to how float tanks might affect our ability to “meta-program ourselves” Thinking of our brains like computers, everything that we experience - thoughts, emotions, actions - are all programs written by code in our brains. And yet, this code isn’t written from a little guy at a control station in our brain, but from our reaction to everything in our environment.

Dr. Lilly believed that if we focus on how our programs are written, we can modify the code and adjust and improve upon those programs. This is why he called it meta-programming but in simpler terms, it’s just another way to think about mindfulness and analyzing our thoughts and actions. Kind of like being your own shrink but instead of laying on a sofa and talking things out, your body is weightlessly suspended in Epsom salts as you do the talking inside your head.

Not only was it Dr. Lilly who found that floating could really help with the process of analyzing his thoughts, but many people who try floating and take it up as a regular practice for improving their health and happiness come to discover how helpful this can be.

Using Changes In Awareness To Make Change In Your Habits

We become much more aware of what is going on internally when we get to escape from the external world for a while through floating. We can use this time to let our bodies deeply relax while also exploring our programs and habits on a deeper level to sort out the cues and triggers and underlying origins of our habits.

This level of recognition is important and one of the first steps that I take when working with clients to understand the “Why” behind their desire to change.

We know that floating helps you to become more aware and present at the moment because there are no other sensory inputs from the external environment that you have to process or to cause distraction around you.

Many of the tools and techniques that we use and that are suggested in the scientific community today to improve mental and physical well-being include raising awareness, also known as mindfulness.

And it sounds simple to just pay more attention and become aware of the present moment but we are all facing the constant external pressures that make this more difficult than ever.

We feel like we’re being pulled in every direction.

Our external world is more and more distracting.

And we feel overburdened by responsibility in our lives. It’s hard to become aware and initiate change even when we still desire it.

We all crave freedom and because of the discomfort that restrictions have itched out in us, we are more mindful of the need for change right now.

Change is scary though. Starting anything new brings with it some excitement and anxiety. But our body and our brain do adapt, and rather quickly, with consistency.

And with change in ourselves, we can also help to initiate and inspire change in others. A lot of what we’re hoping for more of in the world right now.

How Ready Do You Feel For Making A Change?

It is daunting to make changes in our lives. Each of us has the ability to change if we choose to and part of that is knowing on a deeper level what you want to change first. This needs to come first before setting arbitrary goals that sound good on paper.

Are you ready for a change?

Take this quiz to find out.

Reflecting on 2 Years at Flow Spa

We’ve made it to Year 2.

It’s been a wild journey as everyone can appreciate what’s happened in the past year.

This time last year I was having fun making a day in the life of a float centre owner video. Everything was rosey and great as we made progress each month all the way up to year one.

The momentum train was rolling and it felt like business was picking up.

Then a week later, we started to hear reports about COVID-19 become more than just some bug a few people had. There was talk that the whole country would be shut down.

And a week after that, I watched Trudeau make that announcement and my mind rebelled at the thought of Flow Spa having to close after all the traction we had just built.

I didn’t want to close the doors.

But people were also being responsible and starting to stay home and stay away.

So we entered into a strange season where the business was shuttered. I took my passion for helping others and wellness online and started to share strategies for staying well at home when your favourite stress-busters and recovery and mindfulness practices weren’t available for a while.

The vision for finding your flow stayed the same but the mission looked a bit different as we couldn’t float or meet up in person.

And so the year 2 was a roller coaster like that. Several months of no activity at all in the spa. Followed by a few months of regaining traction and things looking very good again. And then entering into lockdown yet again for another six weeks to once again lose some momentum.

Everyone talks about the long-term vision needed when starting a business. Unfortunately there’s no game plan for when a pandemic strikes a startup.

All I know is that what we do at Flow Spa makes a significant difference to the well-being of our community. People need floating when all other options for pain relief and anxiety and stress reduction aren’t the right solution for them.

The science behind why floating works is rock solid and that’s what caught my attention so much from the beginning. I’m all in for what works and is validated by science. Stillness is the key to it and since we don’t give ourselves enough of that in this on-demand world we live in, there is an essential space available for float centres to offer up that much-needed escape from it all.

So while it’s unclear how many times we’ll be sent back into lockdown, we will keep striving on this journey because as I see floaters every day come out at ease and with a sense of stillness that wasn’t there an hour earlier, I know that what Flow Spa is doing is grounded in actually making a difference for many people.

And so whether you like floating or not, even in these challenging times I hope that you can continue to seek progress in yourself with your wellness, and passions, and continue to Dream On and Find Your Flow.

Getting Back On Track After COVID-19

It has been over 100 days since Canada was struck down by COVID-19 and the world changed forever. Things are different now, the new normal, as it has been known means a lot of different things to a lot of people but the one consistent thing is that we have to adapt to survive and thrive.

Admit it, there were times over the last several months that were not very productive for you. Tiger King ate up a weekend here, TikTok an hour at a time there, and throughout it all, there was an impending sense of doom weighing on your chest.

As dramatic as this all sounds, it has been the reality for most people that I've talked to and coached through this time.

But the past doesn't have to dictate the present, nor the future, and if you are looking to accomplish your Dream Goals, you will more often than not have to face things in just this way.

So how do we return to performing our best and being productive again? Or if you recognize that you aren't the best as productivity, then how can you use the past several months are fuel for living a more meaningful life?

Watch The Video Version Here

Reflect on what you've learned in the past several months

The first thing that we must do is set aside some time to reflect on what we've learned during the past several months. Make this tangible for yourself. I use an hour or so Sunday morning every week to reflect and review each week and then on a monthly and quarterly basis, I do an even deeper reflection that often lasts several hours. Right now I want to you schedule an hour for reflection into your calendar this Sunday morning - or another time if it works better for you but do it now. Don't leave it unscheduled and expect it to get done.

The power of reflection is not to be underestimated when it comes to holding yourself accountable, learning to overcome obstacles, and making progress.

We've all been through incredibly difficult times in the last hundred days. Businesses are hanging on by a thread and a prayer, our friends and loved ones have become sick and died, we've been disconnected from the social bonds that keep us sane, and our financial turmoil has stressed us.

This is not meant to be a doom and gloom message to you though. Yes, it has been hard, but what have you learned from this? If you're reading this, it means that you're still breathing and you've still got access to one of the most powerful technological advances humans have ever created with the internet.

During your reflection, you can write about what you've learned from the negative but also look at the positive things you have learned or experienced.

• Who have you been able to connect or reconnect with?

• What interests or actives have sparked creativity and passion in you?

• What have you created or what did you hope to create during this time?

Instead of getting down on yourself, look at what you want to accomplish next in your life.

As I mentioned in the introduction, most people have not used the extra time on their hands to accomplish anything very meaningful during the COVid-19 quarantine. But don't get down on yourself about it. The stress and anxiety of the times were physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually draining and did not make it easy for anyone to have the desire to pump out ideas or create the next great tech platform.

Let's look at what you can do to move forward from here and accomplish next in your life.

Did something spark your interest and passion? Of course, one of the most common plans of all is that maybe you want to exercise more and get in better shape. It could be that you wanted to create a side hustle that you're more passionate about than the work you currently earn a living from, or you want to connect better with your loved ones and friends.

Whatever ideas came to mind that you've reflected upon are great and meaningful to what you want to work on accomplishing next in your life.

Now the trick is to create simple steps to build momentum.

Don't try to pile too much on your plate.

Maybe work is also picking back up now or deferred bills are coming due. You've got to look at your Whole Life to know how much more you can handle.

Building momentum from zero to one hundred takes time. If you overdo it you'll run the risk of burning yourself out and I think that's going to be a particularly prevalent concern in the coming months as we enter this New Normal.

Start with a modest amount of change in your schedule. If you're looking to include more exercise, build up and start slow. It's going to depend on your current fitness and capabilities but even starting with three 1-hour sessions per week is great. Then build up your capacity from there. The same thing goes with starting a business on the side. Focus on the steps that are going to get you to making money from it and validating the idea. Start lean and don't waste time on things like designing logos or upgrading to fancy software if you haven't validated the idea first.

You want quality output from the time you put into it. Believe it or not, something that we do as peak performers is generating more quality work in a single 90-minute block of time than most people can complete in a full workday. If you structure your time and intention in the work that you do for your side hustle in the same way, in no time, those last three months that felt like a waste will become a valuable time where you let your ideas percolate.

Respect the need for recovery.

Everything has to be rebuilt slowly as we are all still facing stress and uncertainty. So be patient with yourself and remember the journey.

If you didn't take care of your recovery as well before COVID-19, now is an excellent time to consider how you can do better with your self-care and recharging regularly. Grinding through every day and week is not the path to peak performance. Much like how REM sleep fluctuates on a 90-minute cycle through the night, our energy oscillates throughout the day in 90-minute segments as well. We can use willpower and discipline to push ourselves from 8 am to 10 pm every day but this drastically affects performance throughout the day and the stress that builds up from the schedule leads to burnout, much like how an athlete that tries to perform in the same fashion without recovery will overtrain.

Each individual requires different needs for recovery, but just like how you're going to add in modest amounts of the Dream Goal projects that you're working on into your schedule, add in your self-care and recovery routines.

Hopefully, you spent some of the quarantine time getting a restful holiday but if you didn't, it's important to note that quality recovery includes things that you enjoy, getting into nature, sleeping more or doing other restorative mindfulness practices like meditating but does not include watching the blue light screens of TVs, tablets, or other tech devices.

Often your most ideal recovery activities will be the opposite of the style of work you mostly do. If you're at a desk job most of the time, recovering with something physical can be very beneficial and if you've got an active job, de-stressing with more creative and calm activities might be best for you.

Most importantly, do the things you enjoy.

Schedule your work into 60-to-90-minute blocks of time throughout the day, include time for refuelling and re-energizing, and block off at least 2-3 blocks each week to do your deeper recovery activities. Also make sure that you're getting the right amount of sleep that you need, typically 7-8 hours every night. This is what maintaining a balanced and productive schedule as a peak performer looks like.

We all go through adversity on the journey of life, but if you're going to be the hero of your story you've got to reflect on what this last chapter taught you and what's coming in the next chapter of your life. Start the process slowly and build up momentum. And remember that we all need to prioritize recovery even more than ever to keep our immune systems healthy and balance the stressors in our lives.

To learn more about how you can perform your best in this next phase, check out the free webinar on peak performance and the new normal.

Building Your Bliss Station

Building Your Bliss Station

In Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about the necessity of your workspace for getting quality deep work done. Deep Work refers to the tasks that require ingenuity and creativity; the kinds of jobs that humans excel at that cannot be recreated and automated by robots and AI.

In his excellent book, Cal Newport talks about some of the giants of knowledge work over the past several centuries and how seriously they took their work by creating fortresses of solitude to do their work in.

Carl Jung built a cottage where he would retreat to for days and weeks on end to do his deep work. Similarly, Bill Gates leaves for a week each year to a cottage without connection to the outside world to do nothing but think about challenges and read.

Joseph Campbell called this the act of building your bliss station; Austin Kleon talks about this idea in his excellent book for creatives called Keep Going.

Building your bliss station means you’ve got a space that you keep sacred from non-work activities - you can get your deepest thinking and creation done. This means that ideally, it’s not in your living room or your bedroom.

Sometimes this can be challenging and unrealistic, especially when the whole family is at home right now. This is why technology can help us to bridge the gap between a bliss station and the realities of modern living.
Ideally, your bliss station is sacred and doesn't have to be converted depending on the time of day but do what you need to at this time to get your deep work done.

If you're looking to optimize your productivity at home and for the future at work, build yourself a standing desk or buy one. Standing to work helps to energize you, ergonomics are better if you're working at the right height. You will also find that you can get more work done by keeping your body more active than if you are sitting and slowly curving forward while bent over your computer screen day-after-day. Try it out for yourself and just see.

I recommend having a chair or something to sit on nearby so that you can alternate your position every once in a while because standing perfectly still isn't ideal either. I also started using an acupressure mat to stand on for a little bit of cushion but also to have something that stimulates me to keep moving and shifting weight throughout the day.

This excerpt was from an article on Performing Your Best While Working From Home on the Flow Academy

Setting Lofty Goals While Making Sustainable Changes

Whether you're part of big business, a small, locally-owned business, or an individual setting and striving for your resolutions, the threshold of passing from one year to the next sparks a lot of latent energy for most people.

Businesses often use the start of the new year to look forward to setting lofty goals, although the year often cycles around the financial calendar and need not be based on January 1. It's in the sustainable little changes that we see our greatest goals accomplished.

Colleen Hunt gets into this on the FlowCast this week. With her business partner at Naturally Nested, she has lofty goals for her young business but is focussed on what she can do at the macro scale to keep moving forward.

She first had a vision for what the future held for herself and her business last year when she dreamed up the idea to hold an exhibition where people could go to meet the business owners providing different wellness opportunities in the city, supporting not only her own business but the whole health and wellness community in Peterborough. Step by step, Colleen gathered the sponsors and support of other businesses to make it happen at the start of March of this year for the inaugural Peterborough Wellness Expo.

The bigger goals and the steps to get there will be unclear to you in the beginning. It takes practice and experience to figure out how you're going to accomplish what you've dreamed up. But the more that you can look at what sustainable changes you can make right now, the better you'll be at doing things that stick long-term.

As Colleen says, picture it like this: if you look at making the smallest, sustainable change once per week, you can build up many new habits over the course of the year but it will feel vastly different than the overwhelm of trying to do it all at once.

52 new changes or habits essentially makes you a new person in a year.

It's the same when looking to be 1% better. Strive to be just one percent better each day or each week and you'll 100% different before you know it.

We all envision this perfect future life and the simplest way of achieving the perfect future life is to start with a perfect day, and then a perfect week, a perfect month, and so on.

To get to the perfect day you just have to start by making your day 1% better.

So get in the routine of reflecting on your day before you go to sleep and ask yourself how you can be 1% better tomorrow?

Be Content, Not Complacent

Envy is a pernicious emotion.

It’s harmful to your sense of well-being, your reputation, your business, and your flow, which is why we’re talking about it on this week’s episode of the FlowCast.

Much like comparison, most of us realize that we should work on feeling envy less often and less intensely as an emotion.

Listen in as we discuss the negative repercussions of envy on flow in this week’s podcast.

There were a few key takeaways that you can work on implementing right away to eliminate envy:

• Create before Consume.

  • Box off your creative work at a time where it won’t be influenced as much by outside sources.

• Know what you actually want for yourself.

  • Is that shiny thing your friend has going to make you happier?

• Find contentment in the present moment but don’t get complacent.

  • Mindfulness and flow will help you to overcome a lot of negative emotions including envy.

Find out more about these tips and other strategies by tuning in to the FlowCast.

Challenge Yourself Regularly

Humans are driven forward by a condition of never being satisfied.

It's how we evolved and learned how to thrive and progressively grow as a species.

Challenging ourselves regularly is the only way to remain satisfied long-term.

Stagnation breeds complacency.

I saw a shirt recently with a bold statement printed on it: "Give me progress or give me death."

My friends Josh and Dan epitomize this need to always push forward with progress.

They've created an awesome trail run community event in Peterborough that's taking place next Saturday, November 30.

Listen to this week's episode of The FlowCast to learn more about the event and sign up for "The Runs" at: https://theruns.itsyourrace.com/register/?fbclid=IwAR3M3u9feq6u6-EfymyOSq73yp8mapQjC36jN_5QZbiTwpHRA2zdkhCqmOQ

Prepare Yourself For Your Biggest Challenges

Everything you are trying to do has been done before.

When you accept this instead of puff out your chest at the ego-insult that you are unoriginal you open the doors to a superpower. That superpower is acquiring knowledge.

Books may be the best form of knowledge accessible to this day. With everything immediately accessible through Google it’s hard to pull ourselves to deep dive into a book for answers but heart and soul is poured into a good book. When we are trying to create something great, heart and soul are essential. A book need not always be right to provide you with insight but a Google answer does.

When we look to the biographies and lessons told from great people across generations passed we can absorb a lifetime of their best knowledge in just a few hours. It helps to smooth out our own journeys and prepare us for our biggest challenges. We know it will be hard because we’ve been told and shown that through stories of persistence. There will be struggle. Every path will be messy and never straightforward.

We must prepare ourselves for hardship and always remember this.

When another obstacle comes, turn to the lessons of others in order to accelerate the way through. There are no shortcuts and exact answers, but coming to the battle standing on the shoulders of giants that have come before us gives us better vision of the road ahead.

The Power of Success

“Did you know that Tony Robbins burns 11,000 calories a day when on stage?”

It’s hard to imagine, so I knew I had to see this kind of performance for myself.

Bob told me that if I ever get the chance to see Tony Robbins live, it’s well worth the cost of admission.

Last week I had the chance to make this long-term goal a reality as Tony Robbins was the keynote speaker at the Power of Success seminar in Toronto. If you’re at all familiar with Tony, his stage presence is exactly what you have seen, whether from a seminar clip online or the Netflix documentary I Am Not Your Guru.

I had a great experience and felt energized for the entirety of the 14-hour day and some of the most valuable lessons that I learned from Tony are the topic of this week’s FlowCast.

Give it a listen, there are many great lessons to learn from it around the topic of success and peak performance.

The Human Will Is Incredible

Sometimes social media gets us stuck in a loop of feeling that our lives are not as exciting or interesting as the lives of the people we are connected to but if you look closer, you will find inspiration in those posts, tweets, and TikToks.

I saw an example of a friend who had made an incredible change from a bleak situation into a hopeful future recently and it got me thinking…

There's a lot of darkness in the world today and if you wanted to it wouldn't be very hard to dwell in a cloud of misery.

What we sometimes forget though is that the human will is incredible and has endured the most horrific events throughout history. Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl is the classic example of how even when there's nothing else left, the human spirit and will never be stolen away from you.

Positivity and optimism lie at the root of all the historical examples of incredible human will. Limiting beliefs are bound to cast you downwards in a spiral of despair.

If you're going through a hard time or stuck in some way, draw inspiration from the world around you and keep moving forward. Making the shift with limiting beliefs is not easy but just like putting in the reps in the gym to build bigger biceps, putting in the repetitions with positive messages will build that new belief system in your brain.

Don’t compare yourself to others and see it as a reason for feeling down on yourself, get inspired and build on the positivity around you to live even brighter.

Finding Your Path

We’ve already had a lot of great discussions on the FlowCast and one question that is central to our mission of helping to find your flow is how to navigate the challenges of being a student and finding your purpose. Students face extreme pressures from every direction. Their peers, parents, teachers, and the standardization of tests themselves all combine to make a mental soup of confusion for adolescents who are seeking some understanding of the internal and external worlds around them. 

Several of our guests, as well as our co-host Telsi, have talked about how they veered from the path they were ‘supposed to take’ into their true calling

Below are some of the best clips that we’ve had recently in terms of advice that we’d like to share with our young audience looking to find their purpose or some direction on their journey.

Trust Your Gut

Laura was on what seems to be a very common path for students with picking the toughest university in Canada and one of the most competitive environments for students in life sciences. I went through the same route myself and can attest to the pressure and difficulty of undergrad life sciences at UofT. 

Laura found the right opportunity at the right time though as she discovered a jobs fair booth for the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and that was the moment everything changed for her. 

Nothing Is Permanent

Telsi followed a very similar route through university as Laura and realized that her course selection wasn’t true to herself and her calling. She discovered the Canadian College of Homeopathic Medicine and shifted gears from more traditional life sciences into homeopathic medicine. Recognizing that psychology and mental health played an important role in the lives of the clients that she regularly met with, Telsi did eventually return to university to round out her skill set as a personal trainer with a psychology degree.

Fight for What You’re Passionate About

Many of the most successful athletes and business people go all-in on their passion. While they may still acknowledge the risk involved, these people put everything on the line to achieve a level of mastery that we all can glean inspiration from. 

Mike Doherty felt so passionate about Muay Thai that he left his job so that he could focus all-in on the training he needed to do to become even better. He opened a gym and started coaching other athletes to become champions themselves and furthered his skill. 

Water Finds its Way 

If you’re feeling lost or without a purpose, know that it takes more time and more experiences. You don’t know what you truly love to do until you have lived and experienced many different things. Slow down and have patience. You’ll find your way.

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