Bring your own ...

We all know what BYOB means right? It’s a restaurant that doesn’t serve alcohol, so the BYOB means bring your own booze. We love those establishments that have a full bar, great wines, and specialty cocktails. And when the food is as good or better than the booze, all the better. But we also love those restaurants that require us to bring our own booze. Maybe it’s because they couldn’t get a liquor license, or maybe they prefer to focus on their passion for the food they cook, and either way, they are still a BYOB.

What if we thought about this in other areas of life? Even if we aren’t a restauranteur, or even if we are, we face other situations and opportunities in life that require us to bring something else to the game in order to achieve success. What if we thought about changing BYOB to BYOK, bring your own kindness? Or BYOS, bring your own strength. Perhaps it’s BYOP, bring your own peace. As you read this you could probably fill in the blank with, bring your own compassion, grace, awesomeness, courage, hope, or any other positive, encouraging, and affirming word.

So, let’s tackle a few, shall we?

BYOK, bring your own kindness. As I did some research for this column, asking people what they wished the world would bring if they had to bring their own

CHRISTY STEADMAN Editor csteadman@coloradocommunitymedia.com

LINDSAY NICOLETTI Operations/ Circulation Manager lnicoletti@coloradocommunitymedia.com

ERIN ADDENBROOKE Marketing Consultant eaddenbrooke@coloradocommunitymedia.com

Winning

I who vey ness world that a little a dent this anything, kindness was the number one word. Those I spoke with and others who responded to a survey shared that the ugliness and negativity of the world had them wishing that the world could be a little kinder, well actually, a lot kinder. One respondent was so convicted of this that she felt that, “If we could all just show up with kindness every day, we could actually have a greater impact on the world than climate change efforts, economic shifts, and voting in the right candidate for president.”

BYOS, bring your own strength. Sometimes life deals us a bad or difficult hand. Sometimes we find ourselves in a season of life where we succumb to our weaknesses, or we see the situation as too much for us to handle; Illness, divorce, addiction, or death in our circle of family and friends, and so many other horrible life events that can cause us to cave. BYOS means that we find our inner strength, and if we don’t have that strength or can’t find that strength, we need to BYOS, bring the strength of others who come alongside us, just when we need them the most.

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