how does your best life serve your collective?

New moon, new topic — impact. let’s get into it..

Let’s check in first, what’s going on? how are you? take a breath….. loosen them shoulders up, stretch your neck, take another breath….. aaand now we’re back. how’s the journey going so far?

You know, self-discovery, stripping away the layers of who you thought you were / who others expect you to be / who you’re not.. realizing maybe you’ve outgrown the habits and behaviours that have brought you so far in life and it’s time to reassess, eliminate, enhance and evolve.. the journey inwards to deeper parts of yourself and shining light on them, understanding yourself more intimately, why you are the way you are, why certain people trigger you the way they do etc.

— that fun as journey we’re here to navigate,

not just so we can realize our purpose and potential but so that whatever we do, wherever our journey leads us has some kind of positive impact on others.. that us contributing back to our collective is an integral part of us living our best lives…… and the story of Kupe and Te Wheke a Ruamuturangi reaffirms this for me.

To cut a very long story short… Kupe and co were following Ruamuturangi’s pet octopus from Hawaiki here to Aotearoa. One of Kupe’s bros was Ngahue, he journeyed down South and came across pounamu, he took some back to Hawaiki where the stone was fashioned into Tutauru and Hauhauterangi, the adzes used to carve the Te Arawa waka which brought my tupuna (ancestors) from the homelands to their new home in Aotearoa.

So the impact of Ngahue’s voyage was huge. Is huge! It’s still being felt today as whakapapa lines multiply and we try to engage with that part of our whakapapa in our own way. By exploring the world for our own kind of pounamu (metaphorically or literally) that we can return home with,

to make something useful that will be of value for us and our people.

You becoming the best version of yourself and discovering the gifts you were born with and sharing that with the others is the greatest contribution you can make to the world. That is how living your best life ultimately makes it not about you at all. Take notes from Ngahue, think in terms of impact, in terms of whakapapa obligation and how whakapapa’s got your back.

Go get ‘em. Tēnā tātou,

Hana.