OYou 2012 Boot Camp Challenge – Week 1. 
I don’t know how many times I have been caught up in my own head with this one particular question – what is my passion? Oprah has told us for years that this is our purpose in life…to go and find our passion and has excited us to make our passion our life. But how do you do that? For years, I have been looking for what fills my soul. In my 20’s it was all about looking outside me and passion always rested in the current relationship or cute guy in the early morning college course that got me to class. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that the passion that I’m looking for isn’t going to be found by finding someone else. It’s going to be found by finding me.
There is a reason why we choose the “Lifecoach” series at the beginning of our OYou Boot Camp this year. As Martha Beck spoke during the OYou 2011 event in Atlanta, she talked about riding the wave of your journey. Now, the only wave I’ve ever ridden was body surfing in Santa Cruz when I was 18…but I got the message. Over the months since the conference and through this ongoing journey of finding myself, the lessons about riding the wave have reappeared religiously in my life. The greatest point taken from the inspiring discussion is this: all things in life are temporary. The only thing that is constant is change. If you are riding high and feeling great it’s not going to last forever. Even more importantly, if you are feeling low and depressed or defeated…it’s not going to last forever. A great life strategy for how to maneuver through life – it’s simple. Just ride the wave but while riding, keep your eyes open. What do you see along the way? What keeps coming back into your life? More importantly, what makes you FEEL AMAZING and fills your body up with happiness each time it comes across your path?
So, for this week we are beginning our OYou Boot Camp Challenge looking for our passion and paying attention to life. It’s our “Finding me” journey. Here’s our weekly 3-step challenge.
- Step out of your box and try something new – Anything. A new restaurant or book or road. Get off your regular path, shake things up and do something different.
- Create a vision board for your life – End to end create your vision that you want for your life. Do it and hang it up to remind you to look up and see your life in front of you.
- Listen to your life – Take 5 minutes at the end of each day to find 5 things that made you happy. Look for the smiles from the day and give yourself a few minutes to focus on what lifts your heart. We are hopeful that this will be fuel for the soul.
We hope you follow our journey and are inspired enough to start your own. Welcome to week one of our OYou 2012 Boot Camp Challenge. Take the time to pay attention to your life…take care of your mind, body and spirit and it will take care of you.
This lesson is so on point, for ME. These last three years I have been caring for my son, Bobby. He was diagnosed w/Lymphoblastic Lymphomia , a very aggressive cancer, in March 2009.It has been a rocky road. We almost lost him a couple of times, and he has developed deseases from the chemo he received. He currently suffers from a bone desease for which he takes Valium & various pain medications. His cancer is finally in remission, yet he is so weak.. His digestive system is shot, & he’s still on multiple medications. Bobby just turned 18. He no longer needs the constant care he once did. Although, he is far from healed. I find myself floundering. I want so much to be a part of OYou Boot Camp but I’m not quite sure how it fits my life at this time. HELP!
It sounds like you have been an amazing mom on an important journey with your son and that is an important part of who you are. We started this bootcamp last summer to force ourselves to take the time to try to live our best life. It was inspired by Oprah, O Magazine and OYou but what we learned along the way was beyond our expectations. This year, we decided to make this an annual event. Just like you clean up in your home…take care of your car….do all the other things on your life list to keep things running, we’ve committed to 12 weeks to do some work on our own lives to strengthen them and to help keep them running too. This bootcamp is meant to help refocus just a little time to you and your life. We’ve outlined specific areas for each week…and often, the previous lessons stick with you as you progress through the other weeks. But really…it’s about putting yourself on your list and taking just a little time to find yourself again. Even if you take 10 minutes for yourself at the end of a long day…or you give yourself a walk to think about all the things that you want to do in your life…or see in your life….it’s movement for your life. It’s focus for your life.
YOU are what we do this for. We hope to inspire one single person to stop, breathe and say, “Yes…this is what I need. I going to try…” If you are not sure how it fits your life, know this…sometimes we are not sure how it fits into ours…but we know that last year, it changed our lives…and this year, it will too. Maybe all you can do it follow along with ours…we hope you do. And if you have comments or are moved, we hope you send them to us. This, for us, is opening our hearts and sharing the experience. If it changes one person and how they see their world, that is priceless to us.