Becoming: a belated review

As I sit here this morning struggling my way through the current prompt in my copy of Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice it occurs to me that I never reviewed the book that prompted this journal, Michelle Obama's autobiography Becoming. 

I have a romanticized idea of the Obamas that Becoming somewhat reinforced but also somewhat reduced. More than anything, Michelle Obama's writing reveals the lived lives of real people - people who fight, people who fear, and people who get angry but know better than to show it, most of the time. 

What stayed with me from Michelle Obama's perspective is her sense of self. From an early age, her parents instilled in Michelle a belief that she could have and be anything she wanted, but not without effort. She is not a romanticist - I believe that may fall more to her husband - Michelle is a woman who worked hard to maximise the opportunities presented to her, who is learned and accomplished in her own ways, and who still struggles with the injustice and unfairness of the world. I will admit I admired and appreciated the brief glimpses of eye-roll Michelle that she reveals in the book, imperfection is endearing, relatable, and human.

Becoming is personal without being self-obsessed, moving without being manipulative, and inspiring without drama. Michelle Obama showed me a new way to write that is simple, strong and honest.

My tl:dr review:

• Loved it
• Recommend it
• Would read more from this author

onward

Since the turn of the decade, I've been playing with the idea of a fulfilled life. What would that look like? What would it take to go to bed each night clear you've done something that fulfilled you? What builds character and abilities, or satisfies a promise or expected outcome? What dreams that I've dreamed would still be fulfilling to achieve? 

One of my favourite quotes. 

It seemed to me like a useful tool for answering these questions would be to start with clearly-defined values - how could I know what fulfills me without knowing what truly matters to me? Values are talked about frequently, but how many of us spend time clearly defining them for ourselves? What activities do we undertake without even the attached values? For example, I love to travel. However, "travel" isn't a value; it's an activity - the values behind it for me it learning and experiencing new things, a desire to understand the lives of other people, curiosity, openness. Conversely, I spend a lot of time watching TV, but nothing in that activity relates to my core values so it doesn't enrich or fulfill me. 

Over the course of the last 10 days or so I've worked my way, purposefully and slowly, through Scott Jeffrey's Seven Steps to Uncovering Your Personal Values. Although I consider myself fairly self-aware, it was still useful to follow these steps to affirm some assumed values and to uncover or clarify some others. 

In the end, I identified 5 core values and created 5 related value statements. It occurs to me now that these cover everything except my spiritual life. I'll spend some time considering how I want to include that, or if a "statement of faith" would be a separate thing. As always, being a human is a work in progress, and I reserve the right to change my mind about all of this. 

My Core Values: 

Adventure: I dance through life with openness and curiosity, visiting new lands and enriching my mind. 

Creativity: I  create, and support the creation of, beauty, art and authentic human expression. 

Justice: I activate my privilege for the good of all people, leading to global social and economic justice. 

Connection: I contribute to others and invite contribution through teamwork and actively engaging in community. 

Vitality: I experience strength, stamina and flexibility in mind and body through passionate growth at any stage of life.

Faith: Jesus loves me. Belief in God is not just a part of my heritage; it is a living part of me expressed in action.  

Up next - revisiting my 100 item quest list with my values in mind and see where that leads. 

so, it's 2020 is it.

I have not written in so long that I'm surprised to find my blog still exists. My typing is so full of stumbles I hardly know if my fingers are in the right places. But, if how I feel today is any indication, maybe that's all going to change. Because, you know - everything changes on January 1, right? Ha.

Almost 5 years ago I wrote a list of 100 things I'd like to do, be, or experience. I had a running start at it, but interruptions in cash flow and a crisis of confidence have slowed my ability to cross things off that list. Oh sure, some of them didn't require money, but 2019 was largely about survival for me, which doesn't leave a lot of energy for creating.

I don't tend to write New Year's resolutions, but I do find December a good time to reflect on the closing year and set an intention for the coming one. I struggled this year to find a word for that intention that really inspires me. "Vision" and "Focus" both came to mind but

a. neither really hit the mark on what I want this year to be
b. I HATE puns so for 2020, nothing sight-related would do.

And then I found it - a word with two primary meanings, both of which have been missing from my life lately.

It has been my experience that achieving things I desire or promise (to myself or others) leads to satisfaction, happiness, and a sense of developing myself. And, to be immodest, I've been pretty good at those things, in general. I've certainly long considered myself someone who manages to cross things off a list. For all the personal development work I've done though, my abilities and character are definitely not "fully developed." There's room to grow.

So, I'm looking forward to a fulfilling year: to crossing things off lists old and new (first step - updating my Quest for Plenty into a Quest for Fulfillment); to developing my abilities and character; to achieving desires and keeping promises.

PS: One of those promises I make right now to the three people who keep asking - I will write more. Consciously and with an eye to fully developing that ability.