A curator for a museum makes sure that only the highest quality art makes it into the museum. We must be the curator for our life.

We choose books to read and how to spend out time. We choose the people we wish to spend time with, too. You’ve probably heard the old saying: love your family, choose your friends.

The trickiest part comes when we must stand guard to protect against negative energy and draining influences. In order to prevent a toxic person’s influence, we must first recognize the negativity for what it is: horse pucky! See it for what it is - right away. This takes practice and requires awareness.

Be able to identify BS and anything that isn’t going to serve you. I’m not saying you have to live in a perfect bubble. The more you spend time on self-development, mission, purpose, goals, and self-work, the easier it’ll be to sense the toxic energy coming your way.

Let’s describe the feeling you want to have when curating your life. As you may know from prior blog posts, I recommend a creativity-building writing exercise called word salad. It’s a short, zany, stream-of-consciousness story you write and you have to use 15 color words (new vocabulary or at least uncommon words and phrases). It takes about 10-15 minutes. Start by carefully selecting - ahem… curating - your 15 words. I like to think of myself as walking through the forest with a big straw basket and carefully selecting the best truffles to place into my basket. I’m foraging. It’s a warmly invigorating feeling - that’s what you want to move towards.

Surround yourself with things, habits, activities, hobbies, passions, people, music, books, and ideas that enhance your mental wellbeing. Be a curator and stringent guardian - the toughest gatekeeper you can be - for the richness and beauty of your life.