tao of Dana :

Lifestyle lessons that have been life-changing!

It's almost my birthday (!) And my favourite birthday cake ice cream is ready to hit the ice cream machine. This birthday is a celebration of an impossibly-cool year that's been full of travel, production, new friends, old friends and freshly-minted skills. It's been sort of a rocket ship to the moon in many ways and a whirlwind in others.

Life has been full of lessons, as it always is for all of us, but these lessons repeated through the year over and over to the point where they were tested, proven and melted into me as a part of how I live.

They've also proven helpful to others - friends and family- so I thought today would be a great day to reflect and share what has been so key to keeping life in flow and growing and connected and exciting...!

Life-changing lessons

Staying relaxed is the only way to stay creative. It's counterproductive to get stressed out. Relaxation is not the first response to a pile of things to do on a deadline, but in relaxation, things flow. Having lost my voice three times at the start of the year in the face of big projects, I can tell you that no healer or cure could work to help me. Only relaxation could break the cycle!

Things take much longer to do than it seems. Plan for it. Above, the office design that took nearly a year but we thought would take four months. It was well worth the time to do it right!

It always takes more time than I ever realized to get through the airport, to write the emails, to do the work. Shooting a two minute video can take more than an hour, and that's not even the time setting up equipment, hair and makeup, setting up a shot and then editing. That quick project is about 4 hours of a day. It was easy to feel like I was failing when production ramped up and things started taking days and weeks longer than I thought. Allowing more time, preparing in advance...it made for much more flow!

Ergonomics are vital. Invest in the shoes that are good for your body, the exercises like Pilates that make you strong, the ergonomic (or standing) desks all will save you a lot of stress.

People are business. Despite all that people have tried to hammer into me about 'bottom lines' and business jargon against my intuition and my desire, people are business. I can tell you all that I've done this year and all that I'm working on and all of the people involved in each. It's all people. It's not deals and numbers that make things work, its people. I've been blessed with some amazing people...and I'll continue to stick to the people I love and love to work with.

Loved ones always come first. No matter what's happening, they are number one.

Fear and excitement is a barometer of how much good is happening. If my work sucks, I feel nothing. If it's good, I'm mildly happy. If it's scary, I'm in my personal genius zone. I see that holds true universally. Whether I've had to find 100 huge plants in a few hours or create 30 DIY projects on camera in an hour, it's the tapped in, Level 10, fully present moments that are filled with few excitements that help me stay on track.

It's impossible to predict exactly how anything will unfold. People appear, weather changes, flights get cancelled, new opportunities arrive, ideas gain momentum. It's important to have a plan, but to stay flexible within the plan is just as important. All isn't lost on any one thing not happening.

If it's not worth investing the time in to do it right, it's not worth doing it. I have said no to a lot of money this year because it just wouldn't be right. If I feel no connection to a product, a project or a potential collaboration...it's not good or bad, it just is. You don't marry everyone you date, and yet it seems that it's common for people to say yes to everything that comes up, only to find that most of it is like an anchor, sinking their spirits and their days in a clutter of obligations.

There's no such thing as too much Nature. After my trip to Asheville, NC a few months ago I can say for sure there's nothing better than immersion in nature and there's no such thing as too much of that immersion. While I can't pack up and leave LA completely quite yet... there's a ton of Nature immersion being planned for the year ahead... right now!

Everyone needs help. At the start of the year I'd say I had to do all of what I'm doing alone, in business, in life, in spirituality, in everything.... Since then, I've needed so much help that I laugh at the idea that I thought I "had to" do it all alone. Are you in that space where no one can help you? Ask for help anyway! We're meant to work together!!