Something you may not know about me: I’m kind of a big Taylor Swift fan. (Did you know it was her birthday last Sunday? Merry Swiftmas to you! 🙂 )
There are a million and one reasons to adore Taylor. She’s talented and gorgeous, her music is fun and catchy and she set the bar for squad goals in 2015 (the list goes on and on), but what I really love about T. Swift is the way she celebrates her life. Just take a scroll through her Instagram feed and you’ll see pictures of her adoring her cats and gawking over hand-knit sweaters from fans. She literally freaks out over her life, and I believe it’s this practice that keeps drawing more amazing things into her world.
So in the spirit of Swiftmas (yep, apparently it’s going to be a thing), here are some life lessons we can all take from the reigning queen of pop:
Bathe yourself in gratitude. In other words, freak out over everything. Clearly, Taylor has a lot of reasons to feel blessed, but what I think is really awesome is that she can be equally excited over a Starbucks barista wishing her a good day on her coffee cup as she is gazing out into a sea of adoring fans at the Grammys. And my guess is she’s been practicing gratitude for years. The lesson? Focus on the positive. Intensely. Take time to express gratitude for the little things, and those little things will turn into bigger and bigger (and bigger) things.
Don’t take everything so seriously. When TS’s cat scratched one of her reportedly multi-million dollar insured legs, she took to IG to joke about it. How many of us get our egos in a frenzy over just a little bit of negative attention or an unexpected mishap in our day? Not everything is a big deal and life is much too short to get taken out by the small stuff. Don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself and #shakeitoff.
Believe in (and promote) yourself even when others don’t. When critics were concerned about how Taylor’s recent album would do in the charts, rather than allow herself to be dragged down by the negativity she kind of created her own party promoting and hyping the album up on social media. Think about it. How often do we let ourselves get weighed down by the opinions of others (or by our own negative thoughts)? All the freaking time. The lesson here: If you don’t jump on your own bandwagon then no one else is going to.
Be you. As the first wildly successful crossover country to pop artist, Taylor Swift clearly isn’t trying to fit into anybody’s mold. Listen up: Being afraid to truly express ourselves is the number one thing that holds us back in this life. Are you a crazy cat lady? Awesome. Put it out there. Expressing myself authentically is something I’m constantly working on. I’ll be honest, it’s scary, but it’s also so, incredibly freeing. And guess what? People respond to authenticity. So be unapologetically, unabashedly you and forget about those who don’t get on board. (‘Cause the haters gonna hate… Come on, you knew that was coming. 😉 )
xoxo
Kristi
[Photo credit: Taylor Swift, Instagram]
