Pure 🌱 Joy Post 2 - What I've Lost

What I’ve lost….

If you read my first entry here, you learned a bit about how and why I’ve gotten involved in the clean beauty movement and what I’ve gained. I left off by asking you to guess what I’ve lost. Here are some of your very good responses:

• You lost your stagnation.

It would be easy, in my 60s, to become stagnant, and that may be one of the most frightening possibilities about growing old. Unlike contentment, which is a virtue, stagnation has the curmudgeonly power to turn a person inward, to cut one off from others, to kill one’s joy. Learning new things, trying new technologies, and meeting new people of all ages and backgrounds has been a glorious antidote to the curse of stagnation.

• You lost your fear of being criticized for stepping up to the plate on social media.

What will people think!?! While I can tend toward anxiousness from time to time, I generally don’t think of myself as a fearful person, and yet I’ve found myself holding back and second guessing my actions on a fairly regular basis out of fear of criticism. The best advice I’ve gotten to counteract this tendency is to work from a mindset of service and remove outcomes from the equation.

• You lost your privacy.

Oh yeah! I mean, really… who needs to be posting selfies on a regular basis let alone someone my age!?! And does the world really need to hear about one more person’s story?!? Holding my cards close is my preferred way of operating, so finding an acceptable balance between being relatable and not oversharing is an art I’m still exploring.

Now tell me, what are some things you’ve lost that have turned out to be gains?