This is Your Life.

In my late twenties, I transitioned back to San Francisco after a year living in Bali. And I was nervous. Worried about what leaving the ease of island life would look like, even though I knew it’d run its course. Bali served me in the ways it was always meant to serve me. But the time had come to sprout what had been sowed. Most of my concerns centered around what apartment I’d be able to find in a grueling renters market and a self-employed income.

As I re-entered SF life, one of my best friend’s mom needed some help dog-sitting at her stunner of a home at the top of Sausalito’s sunshine belt. For 6 weeks. In one of the most beautiful homes, in the most beautiful neighborhoods, I got to wake up to views of the sun rising over the Oakland bridge, the sunlight twinkling from the tops of the San Francisco skyline. Every morning I’d see that view, coffee in hand, I’d remind myself: This is my life.

Sure, I was in someone else’s home with someone else’s dog. But it was still my life. It wasn’t a mirage. It wasn’t fake. They were my moments, days and weeks of my life to live there.

We have a tendency to brush good things off. Whether we’re staying in a beautiful spot for the weekend, or an incredible opportunity comes our way, or someone wonderful walks into our life…we explain it away. We talk about how it’s temporary. Or not ours. Or borrowed. Or only because x, y, or z happened.

If you hang out with me long enough, you’ll probably hear me shout This is my life!!!! Because when really joyous moments happen it's a reminder for me to soften into them, to accept them as mine, to remember that this is, in fact, my life. With people I’m so lucky to live this life with.

When we remember that fact, it can push us to appreciate. But it can also push us to change. Because is this the life – your life – that you want to be living? Or have you been swept up in choices that have led to waking up in your own life wondering…how did I get here?

I’ve had those how did I get here moments, too. Where This is my life took on an entirely new meaning. Because WTF was I doing in a tiny town, in the middle of nowhere, ignoring every intuition and gut instinct about the person I had followed there? I’ll tell you what happens when you wake up to one of those moments…well, a lot of things have to change. And that change is hard, but it’s the type of hard that will bring you back to yourself – to what you know, what you need, who you want to be, and who you are.

During one of my last days in Israel this month, I had the opportunity to stay at arguably one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, Beresheet. It sits at the edge of the Ramon Crater, which is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. It would have been so easy in that moment to brush off the experience as “just part of the trip I was lucky to be invited on” or “a one-time experience”. But actually, it was my reality. It was my existence. Watching the sunset over the crater sipping on great tequila with two dear friends as we talked with one of the Middle East’s rockstar geopolitical expert and guides…that was my life. And I wouldn’t have gotten there if I hadn’t made a lot of hard decisions from the moment I asked “how did I get here” just a few years ago during a time I didn’t recognize my life, or really even my self. The courage to ask myself that question brought up realities that made me terribly sad, wildly uncomfortable, absolutely unsure of anything other than the fact I trusted myself and I wanted to get back to her.

So when things are beautiful in your life remember They. Are. Yours. This is your life.

And when things are awful, they’re also yours.

But if your problems aren’t getting you closer to a life you want to be living…Then you have choices to make.

The choices will be uncomfortable and downright awful at times because change almost always equals stress. But on the other side of those rough decisions you’ll be able to throw up your hands in glory and shout this is my life!! Because it is. Because you built it. Because it’s beautiful. And it is infinitely, entirely, yours.