Where’s Anne – Thinking About Powerful words like…

Energy, Connection, Passion, Genuine, Remarkable, Abundant, Fun and Artistic!

They’re great words, aren’t they? You’ll come across them often in books and articles about health, happiness, technology, trends, and luxury. We spend lot of time distilling the essentials of these concepts into the way we create and present unique spa experiences here at Willow Stream.

Energy: Feeling energetic is contagious. We need life’s basics – food, water and rest  - and we need to surround ourselves with energetic people so we can lift each other up. As soon as you feel sluggish or grumpy, you know that your basics are out of sync (usually sleep). I also know from experience that just a few minutes with my lifelong friend Linda gets me charged up again. Energy is my favorite word – and we spend so much time on it in our spas.

Connection: We need each other and in particular we need to be with people we feel a connection with. Connections can form around interests, family, history, or neighborhood. They can last just a few minutes, discussing something interesting on an airplane for example, or they might last a lifetime. Shared experiences make life rich. We see a lot of connections in the lounges in our spas; they’re such great places to connect with good friends or to make new friends. I recently met Jackie in one of our Willow Stream lounges and we started talking about the treatments we had just enjoyed. After we shared, I told her who I was and that lead to even more conversation. Now we are also talking on line. I like that.

Passion: Wouldn’t it be great to spend most of our time immersed in our passions? I’m lucky because spa is my passion and that’s what I spend my time doing. Of course, we need energy for passions.

Genuine: A lot of research points to “authenticity” as the newest trend. It’s one of the key pillars of our Willow Stream philosophy: however, there is something even more compelling about the word genuine. Genuine, to me, is authenticity delivered from the heart.

Remarkable: In Seth Godin’s book, The Purple Cow, we learn that what is remarkable today might not be tomorrow. If the concept of what’s remarkable is ever changing, then don’t we need to keep creating new experiences that are relevantly remarkable in the sense of “now”? We usually have to push ourselves to try new things and, more often than not, we find that the new experience is …  remarkable! Then we master it and it becomes “ordinary”. Living a remarkable life means adding new adventures, challenges, connections, passions and fun.

Abundant: So much time today is spent thinking about scarcity: do I have enough money?, will the market crash again?, is the recession over?, really? Maybe if we just shifted to focusing on an abundance of what’s important (health, happiness), we’ll be fine. My husband thinks my abundant shoe purchasing is going to single-handedly (footedly?) turn the economy around.

Fun: FUN is truly contagious. It’s also healthy and it can even make you look younger. We need fun every day along with at least five good belly laughs.

Artistic: Things we can’t teach robots and computers to do will be our future –  using our right brain to the max. We need exercises to develop our creative side. Your artistic nature comes out when you are filled with energy and finding ways to fill your life with the power of energy, connection, passion, genuine, remarkable, abundant, and fun.

A worthwhile health goal for right now might be as simple as putting these words into actions. We’re working on putting them into action more often in our spas, too. The best spa experience we can offer is a fun, remarkable treatment delivered by passionate people in a place that is artistic, inspired and filled with lots of social places to make genuine connections. That’s Willow Stream.