THRIVEstyle. What is it?
First off, I should warn you, this is not Arianna Huffington's blog. Sorry :( In exchange for your displeasure perhaps you will give me a chance...
THRIVEstyle is a concept I developed a year ago to create a phrase that I wanted to use to capture how I like to lead life: Thriving, but not with the crazy obsession of perfection. Thriving, loving life. Thriving, unrestrained. Thriving with style (more on this in a moment).
Thrive
Since I majored in English in my undergrad years, I have an obsession with words, and the word THRIVE is a significant word to me because it has two meanings (according to reference.com):
"1. To prosper, be fortunate or successful (and)
2. To grow or develop vigourously; to flourish"
While I believe some people are fortunate enough to be thriving as a result of luck, there is something significant to be said about thriving as a result of developing yourself vigorously. I get this image of a small child learning to tie their shoes when I read the second definition. I see a small boy, sitting in the entry way of his home on a bench and bending down, attempting to remember the exact sequence of how to loop the rabbits ears around each other. After several attempts on their own, followed by a self-induced session of lower-lipping and arm crossing, they try again. Impatient to learn the task, at the approach of an instructor, the child re-grasps control of the laces in order to demonstrate thier success.
Isn't that just like us? While, we are far removed from the days of learning to tie our shoes, often we apply the same fervor to learning something new simply out of the shear desparation of needing to be successful-- it doesn't have to be perfect. Sometimes we forget that all we need are bunny ears to learn, we don't have to circle-the-block, or whatever the term was that we used to describe the advanced levels of shoe-tying.
When we develop vigorously, we enable ourselves to move onto other areas. If I were to learn bunny ears, I could tie hundreds of shoes for my entire life, and a lot more quickly, then if I spent time each day learning to tie the perfect shoe bow. Sure, the perfect shoe bow looks pretty, but if I get into the shoe-tying business, and I have to tie 500 pairs of shoes a day to meet my quota, then what method do you think I'm going to use? Efficeint or perfect? In fact, with all the time we would save on our efficient shoe tying, we could be building a side business, spending time with a partner or someone we care about, having more time to do yoga or fitness, take a walk, have a glass of wine; I'm sure you could figure something out.
Now hold that thought...
Style
When I use the term style, what I am really thinking of is less Fashion Week, more the way vanilla ice cream yields into a melted puddle of crème anglaise around a warmed apple crips. The French use a term that Americans have adopted: à la mode. It means "in the style. I love to think of apple crisp à la mode as a apple crisp with style, improved, at its peak, but when you look at it, it doesn't look like a perfectly created dessert, like an opera cake or a perfect truffle.
So what am I saying? I want to cover my shoelaces in ice cream? What I am saying is that when I created THRIVEstyle, I believed (and still do) that there are people in this world who want to develop vigorously, and want to improve, in every area of their life: health, career, finances, relationships, and many other areas. The problem is that we have this mentality that in order to do anything, we have to be a perfectionist and produce the perfect product that looks 100% amazing all of the time. Well, guess what? The cat's out of the bag: I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, and there are millions of really successful people, living their dream lives who also aren't perfect. "Done is better than perfect" is catching on as a phrase to apply to all areas of our life because if we spend too much time focusing on being perfect, then we will never finish.
My goal is to show you that you can improve in a variety of areas, get the life you want, be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled, and you don't have to be perfect to get it all. I dieted for most of my life thus far, and I can tell you that any diet I followed worked when I was good about 80% of the time. A cookie here or there never derailed my overall efforts. The only time any diet didn't work is when I would eat a cookie, think "I failed at being a perfect dieter," throw in the towel, eat a cake and have that "I'll start my diet tomorrow" mentality, where I would have to start my whole week of dieting over again because I undid in one sitting what I'd been working so hard to do all week. But living a life where you live paralyzed by fear of making a mistake will only lead you to, at some point, paralyzed to do anything. Analysis paralysis is the biggest dream killer because we spend too much time thinking about our goals and not enough time acting to get to our goals.
So, friends, what we are going to do here at THRIVEstyle is talk about SETTING BIG goals and ACHIEVING BIG GOALS. Join with me on this journey, and please feel free to leave comments about any future items you'd like to hear me tackle.
I thank you for reading, and look forward to sharing so much more in the future.
