Tag Archives: 2017

Day 2665: 2017 Goals Update

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Reflection is necessary for progress – that’s what I keep realizing

 

It’s 11 : 20 AM on day 2665 of my journey towards independence and I managed to pray,read Romans 8:28,  have breakfast and promote my 50 New Feet Campaign benefiting MiracleFeet –   A HUGE thanks to Inna Velasquez who donated $150 and Shaun Francis and family who donated $100  which brings the total raised to  $6 616 only $5 884 more to raise by June 17, 2018 to help 50 kids with clubfoot.

 

Last night I looked by at my 2017 goals and assessed my progress (some goals I achieved, some goals I semi-achieved while others I didn’t even attempt for many reasons). Take a look:

 

2017 Goals Update

 

  1. Continue to be kind, honest and generous [I tried]
  2. Raise at least $250 more for my 25 Smiles Campaign before it ends 9 days from today (January 10, 2017)  [final total raised $10 317.04]
  3. Publish my book Defying the odds: Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way[everything is done I just have to reread, fix a  picture and send the book to agents or publishers]
  4. Keep in touch with my aunties, uncles and grandmother [I did as often as I could]
  5. Call at least one person a month just to hi or thank you [I did most months except November]
  6. Read 10 + books [read 6 book – 6 books is not 10 but it’s not 0]
  7. Donate to or raise money for Miss Earth South Africa – it’s a leadership programme that empowers young South African women to combat climate change (they put in food gardens in schools and communities, organize  beach clean-ups, do talks in schools and collect stationary for school kids….. truly phenomenal work)
  8. Donate to or raise money for Jumping Kids – a South African NPO that provides prosthetics to disadvantaged kids across the country
  9. Donate to or raise money for the Sunshine Children’s Home – a children’s home in my town doing phenomenal work (I went there last year and I was so touched to see how well taken care of the kids were – the adults there are family to those kids they do everything possible to make sure the kids have everything they need)
  10. Donate to the Panda Crew – the Panda Crew are basically a group of friends who go around doing good in their spare time (love my Panda brothers they are everything that’s good and right about our world)
  11. Go paragliding in Cape Town (people are going to think I’m crazy but I’ve ziplined (if  I can get my parents, my physiotherapist and a paragliding company to go along with it) I know I can paraglide (in tandem with a skilled pilot)) (NOBODY can tell me I can’t do something I KNOW I can do I BELIEVE in my own unlimited human potential) [Update : We made the booking to go paragliding on April 8, 2017 -health and weather permitting on the day I will paraglIde with  Fly Cape Town Paragliding on April 8, 2017]
  12. Try painting [yesterday I drew a house and painted it with kiddie watercolours]
  13. Meet Ella Constantinides-Leite
  14. Meet Brent Lindeque
  15. Meet Kerri Stein
  16. Meet Sebastian Schütte  and the Panda Crew
  17. Meet Yusuf Abramjee
  18. Meet Phuti Mahanyele
  19. Diarize at least one good moment of every day [I did this more often than I didn’t]
  20. Learn a new word every day [this was a flop I didn’t more often than I did]
  21. Learn Sesotho [learned most of the vocabulary and recorded the whole thing I still remember some of the words and phrases ]
  22. Go to Paris, Rome, Athens and London

 

 

Day 2656: 6 Life Lessons of 2017

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Every year is a different chapter of one’s life– that’s what I keep realizing.

 

It’s 12: 40 PM on day 2656 of my journey towards independence and I managed to pray,  have breakfast, read and promote my 50 New Feet Campaign benefiting MiracleFeet –  A HUGE thanks to David Boutin, content manager at Social Quant, Inc., who donated $30 which brings the total raised to  $5 506 only $6 994 more to raise by June 17, 2018 to help 50 kids with clubfoot.

 

Yesterday I was thinking about all the lessons I’ve learned this year and just so I wouldn’t forget I wrote them down. Take a look:

6 Life Lessons of 2017

  1. Hope for things to go right but expect things to go wrong (things seldom go perfectly and when you expect things to go awry you won’t be distraught when they do)
  2. A good life is one part noticing the small beautiful moments and one part giving all that you can (this year I recorded one good moment of every day that I remembered and I couldn’t help noticing that all the moments that I considered “good” were ones in which I either appreciated the little things or gave something)
  3. Most moments are meant to lived not captured (nowadays everybody has a camera and with that comes a need to capture every moment but really most moments are meant to be lived not captured)
  4. Some of the best things you do won’t be the things you listed on your To-Do List (I have a To-Do List for 2017 and while I’m proud of having accomplished some of my goals I’m proudest of doing things that were not even on my To-Do List to begin with )
  5. BELIEVE YOU CAN, YOU WILL and sometimes you will even get others to believe in you too (I went PARAGLIDING WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO WALK – when my mother saw someone else taking the leap off the cliff she started to change her mind I saw that, looked her in the eyes and said with so much conviction mom I can do this  at which point she decided to take a leap of her own by choosing to believe in my belief in myself)
  6. You will only ever get that which you have the courage to ask for (this year I asked everybody for every kind of help I needed and while things didn’t always go in my favour some people did shock me by helping me just because I asked)