Why Live Open

2/8/2022

Dear Why Team member,
I hope this weeks message finds you well and beginning your Best February Ever!!

Audio:🗣

Last week I shared with you how my colleague and friend said isn’t it wonderful to be living in our Best Year Ever? This week, I’ll keep with the theme as one of my acquaintances shared with me how displeased she was January flew-by and we’re already in February. I asked if she was happy with how she lived January – she was taken aback by my question responding:
“ It wasn’t perfect but, it was good.”

Would you be surprised by the same question? If January was your best January yet, it’s normal for you to be disappointed it ended, who wants good things to end? But I’m encouraging you to live more open and choose connection over perfection. If January wasn’t your best January yet, why wouldn’t you have your best February yet? What does it take? What are you holding on to that prevents an opening of your horizon?

Holding tightly to the status quo can reduce our ability to give and receive.
Preoccupation with what we currently have, or how we are currently seen, can disconnect us from the many new opportunities life presents us, make us selfish and alienate us from the ones around us. Jim Collins, author of "Good to Great" and "How the Mighty Fall", was once advised by one of his mentors that he would be well served to be more interested than interesting.
Life is best fueled by our openness and curiosity, by our gratitude for the opportunities to learn, grow, and give. Staying a student, fuels our ability to receive and to feel privileged to give what we have received to others.

Five years ago, while on a trip to NYC with my then 13 year old daughter Gabrielle, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to create something meant to remind me how important it is to live open. We visited the wax museum where they offered us the chance to make a wax sculpture of one of our hands.
Stop here for a second and look at your hand. What shape would your hand take right now if you were to make an impression of it?
I simply chose to have one made of my open hand. It is not by chance that this wax impression of my open hand is in my home where I may often see it as a reminder of how I want to live my life. The open hand, for me, is so symbolic of how I might best live my life. When we make a fist, grasping tightly what we fear losing, we live a life both fearful of loss and limited in its ability to receive. Make a fist right now! Squeeze tightly! Now, relax and slowly opening your hand, feel the difference.

There is one particular friend of mine, a fellow Why Team member, that reminds me of the importance of being open to receive every time I see him. We don’t get to see each other very often but when we do, before we exchange any words, he often holds up his fist and then opens it slowly.
I always appreciate the unspoken meaning of his gesture. It has become this connection/insight between us and we often do the same when we part, grateful for the time together and for the letting go to see what life will give us around the corner.

When I see my hand impression, I am also reminded of what a man I respect once advised me: “Always live open and ready to receive whatever good may be given to you.”

Endeavor to live more with the open hand, giving, lifting, serving and by doing so, receiving so much more of what life has to offer. Fear not the letting go, be grateful for the receiving AND the letting go. When we more gracefully allow endings, we are more often graced with new beginnings, and no doubt we have the capacity to make those new beginnings our Best stories yet.

Make it a great week living open,

Steve Luckenbach

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