When you choose to show up in another person’s life, you may leave a forever imprint.
You showing up lets joy loose. So where are you showing up today?
Building legacy
This gentleman, Othillo, was an immigrant into Canada from the Czech Republic. He became a close friend of my parents’ back in the early 1970’s.
He and his wife didn’t have children, but they treated my older sister and me like their own.
Showing up with joy
Othillo had endless jokes, laughter, energy, and the kind of creativity we absolutely thrived upon. He told stories, built us forts, laid hopscotch down on his carpet with painter’s tape, and could incorporate chocolate milk into breakfast like nobody else.
The wheelbarrow game was one of our favorites, and his desire to let joy loose in us imprinted me deeply.
This film was recorded about 43 years ago and Othillo’s joy still echoes in me.
Showing up with legacy
It’s part of what I remember as I answer the call to let joy loose around me.
Let joy loose.
Live your legacy on purpose.
Tell me in the comments: Where are you showing up today?
What’s the reason you get up in the morning? What draws you to put your feet on the floor? Does it fuel you with JOY?
I’ll be honest that many mornings saw my feet hit the floor out of sheer necessity. I didn’t roll out of bed with excitement for what lay ahead of me in the day. In fact I dreaded it, both when working, and when at home with my kids. I didn’t really have a plan or specific goals, or feel at all purposeful. I just knew I had to get up in the morning.
Do You Want to Establish Your Life Purpose?
PSA: It shouldn’t take someone to hit their forties before they discover their life can radiate with purpose.
It shouldn’t be long before they unlock what brings them meaning and joy. It did for me though. I floundered.
But now my season of purposelessness and floundering fuels me to help other people discover their joyful purpose earlier. To establish purpose now. To build the life that not only leaves an incredible impact on the world, but also brings genuine joy and satisfaction. It’s never too early or too late for that while we still draw breath.
Several years back, I head this phrase deep in my soul: Joy Let Loose. If you’ve been around these parts, you know that the phrase itself made no sense in my context at the time because I was battling depression and facing difficult times with my kids and my own motivation.
Joy Let Loose
But I now know that phrase was the gift of a seed that managed to plant its way into my undeserving soil, and take root.
Joy Let Loose first became a blog. Because honestly that’s the only thing I could think of to do with it. I was kind of stuck at home at the time, and unable to work, so I figured I’d do something I was decent at, and use this new phrase as a title. On this blog, it became both a lens and a benchmark for how I would serve my readers. I soon discovered many other people were also starving for joy.
As time progressed and I wrote more for this blog, I had opportunity to write in a few other publications as well. No matter where my words landed, I made the effort to keep JOY as my lens. Because people want to be more joyful.
A Reason to Get Up in the Morning
On social media, I curated and created content to help bring people JOY. People were finding it helpful. Then when I launched as a Brand Partner with Young Living, I found my chief audience were women desperate for help with their hormones and emotions. They needed to find sanity in the chaos of everyday life, and were also floundering. Now I have been so blessed to come alongside a couple hundred people to manage those emotions safely and holistically. And I have the honor of mentoring other Brand Partners as they lean into their purpose too.
As my customers were seeing results in their physical, mental, and emotional wellness, I quickly realized my new small business was an extension of my purpose to let JOY loose in people. And my small business and community bring me exceptional joy.
That’s really just a snapshot of a focused process that helped me lift up my head from discouragement, cultivate purpose, and lean into it. There were intentional steps I needed to take to examine myself and my motivations, to learn how my past hurts were impacting me, and how my perspective needed shifting.
I’m so incredibly glad I put in that work to gain clarity and direction.
Life Coach Certification
I became certified as a Life Coach, and I have a growing desire to teach people. I wanted to help folks who feel joyless and purposeless learn to rewrite their stories as I did. How to reframe past experiences, leverage their unique skills and passions, and lean into a more focused life.
For a beautiful season, I offered 1:1 and group online life coaching. I celebrate being able to help women find their life purpose.
It is so rewarding to see how my own story, my teaching skills, and ministry and life coaching training have prepared me to lead other people toward lives of impact, joy, and fulfillment.
A New Season – Stay Up To Date
And now I’m in a new season asking the Lord, “What’s next?” I’d love to add you to my email list so you can stay up to date as I walk into a developing chapter. Simply click here to stay up to date!
My mom exemplified these questions for me. And with her passing just a few days ago it is becoming even more evident that she loved well. The stories people are sharing are building a consistent, radiant picture of who she was to everyone.
Sacred Moments
She saw her daily activities and conversations as sacred moments. She saw interactions with people as divine appointments, and really SAW people. My mother showed people value, dignity, worth, and her intentional living changed us.
I celebrate my sweet mother today. I celebrate the lives she touched. I cherish that in her quiet kindness, she changed the world around her by helping people hope, and then they turned around to inspire others toward hope and joy too.
What a beautiful legacy.
Many people can look back and see the legacy left for them. Others can’t. But we each have the opportunity to start fresh and choose to leave our own.
My mother gave me a heavenly perspective. She was my equalizer. She gave me eyes to see the difference between what carries temporal significance and what carries eternal worth. I might have shrugged and hem-hawed while learning it, but looking back I now see how my mom taught me discernment.
