CONNECT. CREATE. CONSIDER

Be confident. Be courageous. Be curious.

Wear red shoes, ask questions, don’t take no for an answer.

Trust your gut. Don’t hide behind empowerment. Use your power.

Just is not the word you use to self-describe. You are what you do, don’t deny it.

Don’t be afraid of hard work. Be nervous. Ride that wave until you master it.

Be self-aware. Be self-assured.

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

ReCONNECT with yourself. Ensure you are CONNECTed with your clients, your customers, your community.

CREATE a business, a plan, a year that will satisfy your ambitions.

CONSIDER your values, are you practising them every day, in every post?

Here’s Maya to reignite the fire in your belly, to redefine your purpose, to encourage curiosity….

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.  Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.  Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994)