“Home sweet home!” I screamed as I entered my home after a long day of travel and my last trip of the month. As much as I enjoy traveling, I love, love, love the moments I spend in “my space” at home where I reflect on my experiences, do my devos and get inspiration. The first thing I noticed after being away for basically 3 weeks straight, wasn’t the sunny light coming through the balcony, the comfortable cushion I rest my head on as I write, nor the end table where I place my delicious cup of tea. Instead, I noticed what once was a beautiful plant adorning my space, was now an awful looking planter full of dry leaves and dead branches. I don’t remember seeing a flower from this plant in a long time so the first thought I had was “I’ll throw it away”. I mean, being as tired as I was at that moment, seemed like the best and easiest solution! Nevertheless, I started giving it some attention by cleaning the dry leaves and pruning the branches.

Buried under all of the ugly mess bloomed a beautiful looking flower as well as many new and healthy leaves. I have a question for you: What is surrounding your beauty? Can you think of relationships, habits or your own attitude about life or situations that are covering a better version of you? Give it the attention it deserves, take action and get rid of things preventing to show more of your inner beauty!

Sometimes we need to get rid of things in our lives that are covering more of what we want to give to others. Think of Michelangelo chipping away pieces of marble to release the statue of David. As I thought of Rodin creating the famous statue of The Thinker out of bronze made me research the steps it takes. There’s a lot of layers of molding, covering and melting several times to then proceed with “the breaking of the mold”, which means smashing, hammering away and removing big chunks of clay and the ceramic shell to then refine the imperfections and patina the sculpture. You basically create something to destroy it in order to uncover the beautiful finished piece of bronze.

A good friend and business associate had a minor stroke 45 days ago. I’ll call him Dr De La Paz. For over 3 decades he’s lived a healthy lifestyle but very busy teaching on the importance of the body, mind and soul. This near death experience made him pay attention, take action and get rid of some things that were preventing him from prioritizing properly . Just a few hours ago and with teary eyes he said to me “I’m not scare of dying but having the stroke made me closer to God and those around me, I now don’t do certain things to do more of more important things and I’m closer to God, my most important goal in life”

Just by observing a plant lacking of the basic things to stay healthy or an expert in healthy living neglecting certain practices that make his life truly significant, teaches me three things: Give it the attention it deserves, take action and get rid of things I don’t need in my life!