The most precious asset I’ll ever own

If you took away my business, my money, and my achievements, I would still consider myself a very wealthy woman.

Because the most precious asset I’ll ever own is the memory of my experiences and the emotions that come alive in my body every time I remember them.

Every experience I have collected, and who I was being inside of those experiences, will make up the fabric of what I will look back on and call my life.

But I didn’t always build my life with that in mind.

For a long time, I made decisions based largely on an outside-in definition of success.

How much can I achieve? What should I build? How much could I make? How will the world recognize what I contribute?

And by those measures, it worked: Ivy League education. TEDx stages. Forbes features. Millions in revenue. Thousands of clients served.

Those things still matter to me. I desire to contribute meaningfully out in the world. I would love for my work to reach millions of people. I want to build things that I can see and touch that I’m proud of.

But I no longer want the outside world to be the only thing that tells me whether my life is successful.

My definition of success needed to evolve.

Somewhere along my journey, instead of only asking what I could achieve, I started asking:

What does my soul desire to experience?

And I started taking the answer seriously.

That question has led me to trek through the snowy mountains of Pakistan. Swim with baby seals in the crystalline waters of the Galapagos. Watch a pregnant moon rise from behind the dunes of the Saharan desert. Singing medicine songs in the king’s chambers of the Egyptian pyramids.

And most recently, watch the moon perfectly align with the sun in totality, in the middle of the Arctic seas of Greenland.

A few months ago, a dear friend sent me a link to a boat trip to see the eclipse in totality in Greenland, surrounded by a community of conscious, impact-driven entrepreneurs.

I spent 20 seconds scanning the landing page before hearing my soul say “yes.”

So I listened.

And that yes led me to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, watching the moon completely shadow the sun and cast a grey-blue darkness across the water. Stars appeared in the sky.

Then, slowly, a beam of light began peeping out from behind the moon as the sun made its way back, illuminating the entire landscape.

I stood there with people I love, holding hands, hugging, screaming and dancing in celebration as the sun came out again.

The whole thing lasted two minutes.

But it reconfigured me in ways that will last a lifetime.

Standing there, I was reminded of something I know deeply about myself:

I am a collector of extraordinary experiences.

And every time I honor that part of myself, my life gets a little richer.

Your version of an extraordinary life doesn’t have to mean Greenland. Or Pakistan. Or baby seals in the Galapagos.

The point is not the scale of the experience.

It’s whether you’re allowing the things you deeply desire to shape the architecture of your life.

So here is a little Soul Inquiry for you:

• Look backwards. Which experiences from the last few years made you feel most alive? What was it about them that mattered to you? Adventure, intimacy, beauty, creativity, learning, family, community, challenge?

• Look at this moment. What is calling you right now? What do you keep thinking about without needing to be reminded? What are you researching, imagining, wanting, or saying “one day” about?

• Give it a vote. The next time you make a decision about how you spend your time, money, where you live, or what you say yes to, let that desire influence the decision.

You don’t have to blow up your life to create an extraordinary one.

You have to start giving the things you deeply want a vote in how your life gets built.

Love,

Celinne 🤍

p.s. If you want to look back on a life filled with your version of extraordinary experiences, my book The Burning Ground shares my story of learning to follow my soul, with Soul Inquiries to help you listen more deeply to yours.

p.p.s. and because words alone could never quite do a total eclipse in Greenland justice… a few more photos from the trip below. ↓

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