The Otter Spirit

I value playfulness.

Give me a stone, and I’ll start juggling with it. While playing with it, I learned that when it falls, a stone can crack things open.

A happy failure helped me gather information to grow and opened up new possibilities. Now, when you give me a rock, I know I can use it to crack open shells and find delicious and nurturing food or decide to play with it and learn more.

The more I experience joy, exploration, and life through a lens of playfulness, the more I grow, learn and discover new and exciting things. So, what did you learn from your latest mistake or failure? What opportunities are they opening for you?

Perhaps it’s time to release judgment, shame, and blame, and instead, embrace experimentation and exploration with more playfulness, letting go of the pressure you put on yourself. Look at the kids around you and observe how much they can learn through playfulness, how it helps them unlock skills, resilience, strength and knowledge. It’s amazing how quickly they flourish when they’re free from blame or shame, and conversely, how their potential diminishes under pressure. No matter how grown up you are, you too grow and thrive more through playfulness and joy.

I value simple actions

I’m one of the few animals that use nature’s gifts as tools. Give me a stone, and I’ll use it to crack open shells to enjoy my food. You, too, have many tools and opportunities at hand.

Yet, with the digital age, it is easy to over complicate or complexify how you should or could create what you want to create. Whether it is about feeling limited by the tools you cannot afford, the programs you don’t master, the social media games or the staff you can’t hire, remember that to start something you often don’t need to be as complicated and as expensive as you might think.

Return to the essence of your idea to remember its original energy and intention and ask yourself, beyond technique and tools, what do you really need to start?

You will often find that beyond the tools, it is sharing your ideas, connecting, networking in real life that will help you find opportunities to make your idea blossom.

Oportunities can come in the shape of clients, collaboration, gifts, donated material, and much more. By looking at what you see as a limitation, try to see it as an invitation to change, adapt or realign and you may uncover opportunities that will take you farther than your original idea.

So, what is the original energy and intention of you idea? What would be the most simple step you could take to nurture it?