Doing Everything You Can, With Everything You Have

3 weeks ago my lens, my perspective on my world, shifted.

I, Jacqueline Nagle went north to visit my daughter, staying the weekend in Yeppoon – a town I lived in for 15 years where I married, raised my children, built businesses and loved life.

What was interesting was not that I went back but a conversation with my daughter that reminded me just how much her father and I had done in that town. The homes we had built and renovated, the businesses he had built, that I had built, and the ones we had built together. The Chamber of Commerce I was part of starting, the Local Tourist Organisation I reinvigorated, and the Business Women’s Network I took from irrelevant to sought after.

It was a place where my children got to create, as my eldest son recently put it on social media, a childhood worth remembering. A town that if not for the breakdown of my marriage I may well still be living in.

And yet, moving through the centre of town where we could see many of the landmarks of that life, I realised there is barely a trace of us there now. That most people there now would not even know my then-husband or I and what we did, and how hard we worked, lived, loved and played there.

Instead of listening to the whispers in my mind I realised the messages were reverberating.

Because what worked in that beautiful seaside village was not how beautiful it is. Nor the opportunity that did or did not exist.

It was in the decision to be there. To be completely there. To forget popularity and allow heart to rule. To see things you knew you could help and to simply shift to do it. It was in finding ways to connect, to contribute.

I realised what terrifies me more than anything on this planet, is the thought of a life most ordinary; a life not lived on or in purpose; a life where we don’t get to do great work that permeates every corner of our world.

And this is where honest self-reflection comes to play. Because since that marriage meltdown, since literally trying to outrun the emotional impact of that, since taking a hit on every level in the events since, I have skimmed through the questions that matter.

*What is the business I truly want?

What does matter to me about the work that I do?

How and what can I best create to make the world of the people I work, live and play with better?*

Those questions, together with standing where the beach collides with the street in a seaside village I still love, crystalised what matters.

I created a purpose for this current business, this current thing that I do, and that was to give everyone a voice; that everyone has a voice and everyone deserves to be heard.

But it’s far, far more than that.

It is about micro-economic empowerment. To breathe life into opportunity and potential, to see something that should be done, and simply do it. It is about connecting in, being a part of something greater than me, and contributing to the future success of a place – one business, one opportunity, and one person at a time.

It’s about finding ways to make the most of whatever stands before you. It’s about doing everything you can with everything you have in this moment right now.

Which means there are changes afoot. Some will be obvious, some will appear a seamless evolution, and most will be invisible to anyone but those closest to me.

And as I start to unpack all of this, to elevate and evolve what it is we do, where we play and how we play there, I wanted to take a moment to ask you.

*What is the thing you are most here to do?

Who is it you believe you can and simply must serve?

And how can you bring that to the world in a way that both the world craves, and continually lights you up?*

Until next we speak.

Originally published at jacquelinenagle.com