Thrive Thursday

This is a on going series that is posted on thursday's, to answer the question: "What helps you to thrive in your environment?" The series is written by myself, and a variety of guest Contributors. Today, the post is written by Annie, a friend of mine here in Montreal, who loves to help other people! She hails from the south shore, and is in the middle of exploring different areas where she is able to engage her interests in helping people, here in the city. This is her response to my query!

What helps me thrive? What helps me wanting to keep growing? Two main things: Faith and people.

Faith is the basis for my growth. Faith that I am on earth to learn, to improve, to grow. Faith that every pain I feel is there for a reason, that every failure is a chance for a new opportunity, that every time I experience something new I learn new lessons, that every decision I make will be what’s best for me. Faith that I will always get what I need to keep learning and growing.

If faith is the basis for my growth, people are my support to do it. I thrive from helping people, receiving from people, learning from people, being with people, observing people, etc. I grow from being able to help someone feel good about themselves and telling them what I appreciate about them. I grow when people show me they care about me. I grow from seeing how people who have endured great pain use their experience to get stronger. I grow from smiling to people and from receiving a smile back.

To me, my faith is like the trunk of a tree. It holds me together and it gets bigger over the years. People are like the roots, branches and leaves of the tree. The roots are the people that have helped me find my faith to begin with. The branches are the people that will stick around forever. And the leaves are the people that come and go, but which all had an impact in my life, sometimes helping me, sometimes receiving my help. Hopefully, the tree of my life will keep growing and even when the leaves fall, the trunk will still be there getting stronger.