Free and Powerful. After six months of writing this blog, these two amazingly powerful and liberating words came to the front to frame today’s post. Due to my current personal experience and state of being, I have intentionally chosen first ‘Free’ and then ‘Powerful’. However, I believe we are already powerful as we are, and as such we are or can be also as free as we wish to be. This then leads again to being powerful and then to being free and so on. It is an ongoing motion of energy and our state of being.

I have made some decisions this year, and with them, I have accepted their consequences. I have chosen to go further from and after being free and powerful. Of course, things started way before this year, but the tangible results of these decisions can be noticed more, especially from the others, only now. As I am, I did everything I needed to do. I tried to do my best to create the results I wanted and envisioned. However, there was, and I have learned by now that there always is, a part that was not mine or up to me. It was not up to me to control it or to ‘do’ anything. The only ‘doing’ in it was rather to let it be done, completed, and unfolded, as it should be, and as it eventually was, or is going to be shortly.

My October word was definitely ‘Trust’. And behind it, there was another word – ‘Faith’, or to be more accurate, it was guidance ‘to deepen my faith’. I thought I was quite good in the field of trust and faith already, but this year’s situation, life itself, showed me that I can not be good in it once and for all. Instead, it is more like trust and faith have to be renewed and empowered daily, from situation to situation, from relationship to relationship. It showed me how much deeper, wider, and more comprehensively I can (still) go with it. So, I have been and still am practicing the deepening of my faith. I have realized it does not release you from doing your part, but it does release you from thinking that the doing part is all that is. It also releases you from the expectation of how the result should look or happen. It reminded me to be more present, committed, and trusting along the way, and by that deepening my faith that things will develop as they are supposed to.

From this point on, I could go either digging deeper into what is behind when we are not so strong on trusting and having faith, or I can go the other way, how we display them in our lives. I admit I like feeling free and powerful, and I hope this is something we in the majority have in common. So, no fears or more insights about them today. Instead, I would rather keep us in a higher mood, with the focus on how to stay in a learner’s mode, instead of falling into not good enough or not now trap.

I believe there is for every one of us a huge potential for learning from our relationships. On the issue of trust and faith, we can learn a lot from other people, especially children. However, I would like to focus on one group for today’s post, teenagers. I think we can learn a lot more from them, as we sometimes see at first glance. We have all been there, some exploring more than others. One can hear a lot these days everywhere how demanding, disrespectful, and in a way lost today’s generations of teenagers are. Don’t worry, I don’t want to go into any preaching or advising here. I would not dare, since I do not have my children, and I can just enjoy being a cool aunty for my niece and nephew, and Tanja for others.

What I would like to point out here is that teenagers, especially in this quickly changing and diverse world and society, are an amazing display of all of us, in our society, with all prejudices and fears. They display a diversity of people and their environment, choices, behavior, perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. They also display boldness, experimentation, a powerful and endless drive of trying to find a unique voice and expression, and constant learning and adjusting to the new or at least changed. And as such to me they show an amazing amount of trust and faith, in life itself, in society, in people, and themselves. Which is often not the case with us, grown-ups.

I am happy to have an amazing thirteen and a half (it seems that each half makes a major difference by teens, and us around them) niece in my life, and that I can learn so much from our relationship. I am grateful that I can improve myself so instantly and usually with a smile on my face, considering her being so clear and wise in certain situations, and me being too much in fear and a grown-up thing.

I would like to share with you an experience from the other day, what she showed and taught me in less than an hour. I picked her up from a birthday party of one of her friends and was supposed to just drive her home because my sister was attending a seminar for her work. So you can imagine, two of us, me excited to see her and enjoy our time together, she excited after a birthday party and to explain to me how and what and with whom and who said what and then she/he said this and… After about 15 minutes, the hormone rollercoaster being on full volume, she was expressing herself fully, her perception of life and relationships, of what is important to her and her friends, with all her emotions, different role playing and with showing me how much one can be at the moment, ‘excited about life and everything going on’, and ‘just enjoying every minute of it’. Nothing lost there, nothing too demanding, or disrespectful. Nothing to be afraid of for this generation not to be great. Just pure life energy in expression.

Our drive home was supposed to be quite short and direct, but she forgot her school back at her father’s house, she forgot to buy a present for her friend during the day, and she forgot her keys in her friend’s bag, so a little detour here and then was needed. And in between our stops, she felt the urge to show me a new hip-hop dance they were practicing at her dancing club, of course putting the music on her phone at full volume and doing the dance on the street. Wow. How free and powerful one can be, and why not? It is great if we can support them in this, not, for example, teach them how to lose it when they grow up, because it is inappropriate, not a good time for them, others might think something, etc. And why not us being more like them, free and powerful in every moment? Well, at least how they show up in these kinds of positive times, not in the grumpy ones when they have trouble expressing a single word, and a full sentence seems like a pain.

However, my lesson that day was not finished in this happy situation, of me just observing and enjoying this amazing display of my niece and the life energy in action. Nope. Because our drive took longer, we had the time to speak a lot, and my niece shared with me some things she is going through regarding the divorce of her parents, about troubles her friends have, and how differently they deal with emotions and challenges, some of them in not so healthy way. Here many of my fearful thoughts came out, like that my niece is exposing herself too much, that some of these so-called friends are trying to take advantage of her giant heart and deep compassion, and that they might take her too much in this emotional drama, and a question whether I should do more for her to feel better because of her parents divorced. But she again surprised me with how she showed up, and how she was explaining her perception and understanding of these situations. She explained how she likes being there for her friends, and that they help each other going through certain experiences, that with some she can share everything, and to some she offers her help if they want to talk or something, but also, when they don’t follow the agreement, she let them know how she feels, and that there are more healthy ways of going through problems and life than hurting yourself or others. So, again, it was up to me just to be there for her, listen, and support her in her actions and her compassionate approach.

I admit I do not show up 100% ‘free and powerful’ every day or in every situation or every relationship. I was told that this is normal, that I am human like everyone else, and we are doing our best with what we have in certain moments and situations. Okay, I can live with that. But I know and love the feeling when I do feel free and powerful when I own it and create from it in my life. For me this is not a moment of big outside celebration when I feel this way, but more a gratitude and celebration of an inner, calming, exciting, and empowering feeling that I got it, that I got the ‘life’ thing, that I got the ‘me’ thing. It is at the same time a humble and empowering feeling, and it brings awareness of how influential we are, either way, whatever and however we do things.

I wish all of us many free and powerful moments. To celebrate the moment of the shift/s, and do You. Choose to do You daily, being as free and as powerful as you can be, in each situation, and each relationship. Keep the learner’s mindset and the state of being open to learning and development. It is a matter of choice that you in your heart, go for it, and to accept what follows, and be present to play your part in the game. With such an attitude, you influence and inspire others to be as free and as powerful as they can be as well.