But Do You Feel Alive?

If you asked me a few years ago what it means to feel alive, I don't know if I would have known what to say.

It's because life experience has knocked me down, made me stronger, opened my perception and heart, and basically given me an abundance of different situations to practice insane courage and embrace vulnerability. I'm different now, and boy I've grown.

There's this whole world to experience and we can choose to either stand on the sidelines and judge people who follow their hearts or we can step into the arena ourselves and take the leap of faith.

In the past few years, I've really come to value growth as such a necessary ingredient in our lives. If we're not growing, if we're not pushing ourselves past our comfort zone, we don't feel alive.

Being alive means we take risks, we are willing to embrace failure and imperfection and we choose the adventure. 

Being alive means we choose to do the things that both scare and excite us. It's embracing spontaneity, taking to strangers and the willingness to start all over again. It's saying I love you when we feel it, embracing vulnerability and asking for help. It's getting up in the morning and saying, "I may feel scared, it may be uncertain, but this feels so right that I'm going to give it a try. I'll take the chance."

Because life is all about taking these risks.

I remember the first time I traveled on my own to Montreal from Toronto. It was a train ride to another province in my country, but it was the first time I would travel on my own after breaking down three years back. I had grown from the pain and struggle of feeling isolated in private school and watching my family fall apart. Fully embracing the wholehearted journey, feeling so supported and blessed, I was ready for an adventure. Montreal was one of the best experiences in my life that both scared and excited me.

And I loved it.

When I saw that the fear was good, I moved with it to find myself meeting some pretty incredible people, experiencing insane synchronicity and personal growth.

And this is what I realized: Fear doesn't go away. But we can choose to feel it, and follow our desire anyway. Because it is through facing fear that we become fearless, grow, connect and find the source of limitless love and light that is within all of us.

So book that trip, say I love you, be yourself, change course, choose to focus on the thoughts that serve you, identify your desires and go out there and make them real, live in the here and now, open your mind, open your heart, and be open to experience and live in the mindset that if you can dream it, you can be it.

Yes, it might be scary and uncertain at times, but I promise you that you will never regret the decision to Dare Greatly.

Because its what being alive is all about.