Stay Planted: Remember Your “Why”

I learned how to stay planted. If I could go back, this would be the number one piece of advice that I would have gave my younger self, is just to stay planted. If you imagine a tree, a tree stands tall through all four seasons, right? There's summer when everything looks great, the leaves on the tree are green, fruits out there, sun's bright, shiny every day, and then there's a season of fall where everything starts to change, the leaves start to change colors, everything looks different. You may look in the mirror and not recognize who you see, you're changing. And then there's a season of winter. And when you look at a tree in winter, it lost all its leaves, everything looks dead from the outside. I was there. I've been through depression. I've been through the worst of the worst. And if you looked at me during that time, I definitely looked like I was losing myself. But if you stay planted, what happens to a tree every single year? Spring comes eventually. And when spring comes around, you grow back. And you don't just grow back, but you grow back even stronger. And here's the truth about this life, is that none of these seasons last forever, both the good ones nor the bad ones. Everything may be great right now, and we love that, but it ain't going to be great forever. And even though things are bad right now, it doesn't mean they're going to be bad forever. So I also had to teach myself how to be grateful for all of these seasons, both the good ones, the bad ones, and everything in between, because they all make you who you are, right? Things don't happen to you, they happen for you. So if I didn't go through these things, I don't feel like I would have been more connected to my work than I am today. I don't feel like I would be able to be relatable to the people that I meet and see every single day. And there are a couple things that help you stay planted. I had to spend more time with my friends and my family, people that remind me who I am before anything in my life ever happened. I got to go do the things that I love to do that have nothing to do with my work. And I got to remind myself always from the beginning why I started doing what I'm doing. If you in summer right now and everything is great, live in that, enjoy it, and recognize that you in a great place. Don't take it for granted. If you in fall and you're changing a lot, then make sure you never change who you truly are. And if you're in winter, you feel like you lost everything, don't forget that spring is waiting for you on the other side. You just can't take your roots out of...