Who do you think you are? This was something my parents would ask me, and it was not meant as a gentle inquiry; it was a put-down, and one that it has taken me decades to get over. Coming out of the Depression, good living from their point of view was about being normal, not standing out: just tone it down and be like everyone else. Love them both, but hugely dissappointed in their parental messaging. Words matter; how we speak to others and, most importantly, how we speak to ourselves. As we are entering 2024, who do you think you are? How can we make goals, hold ambitions and dreams if we can’t answer that question? Identity is everything.
AGEIST was created to expand all of our imaginations about what is possible. Our sense of identity is shaped by how we feel about our actions, how we feel about our physicality, how we sense others feel about us, and the tsunami of images and messages we are barraged with every day. Perhaps we are more than we think we are. Perhaps we can do more and, even more audacious, perhaps we deserve more. I am not speaking just about money here; I am alluding to a greater emotional life, more friends, more learning, more adventure, more physical strength, more of everything that makes your life magnificent. It may mean planting more and better tomatoes this year in your much-loved garden, it may mean climbing Kilimanjaro — you get to pick your more. This year will never happen again; let’s make the most of it. We can do hard things, and those hard things become the memories we build upon, and things we inspire others with.
I want all of you to have the best lives possible and, if you are like me, that may require we see ourselves differently. It has been said that thinking ourselves into right action can be very difficult, but acting ourselves into right thinking is easier. Small steps lead to small victories, which can lead to re-evaluations of who we are. Denise Kirtley took small steps, then some bigger ones, and after a couple of years she entirely changed who she identified as. It has taken me 9 years of slow, shy steps to have now become someone who gets excited about what was my number one horror: speaking in public. That shy kid who was constantly told to be less than he was, loves having the mic now. No one is more astonished than I am. This is what I want for all of you this year; I want you to become more of the person you always thought you could be.
Onward and upward,
David
