“I hope you fall in love with being alive,” Soleoado.  This is a simple yet incredibly complex one.  It’s easy to create opinions about our lives when we live in a state of comparison—which we do simply because we are told that’s how it is.  That’s how we know who has dominance over the other, who is worthy of making a decision, who should lead the pack.  We devalue our own ability to make decisions and guide our lives if the things we feel don’t align with what we are told the pre-packaged image of success looks like.  Insanity is buying into a system that immediately shackles you with the weight of debt, obligation, and competition for a false prize—a prize that, if we are honest, doesn’t even exist anymore.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, yet here we are, repeating the actions of a system that has long since proven out of date (and even dangerous/detrimental to people), hoping we will find fulfillment. We walk around with our internal cups empty hoping a full Starbucks will do the trick (not to knock Starbucks if coffee brings you joy—but you get the point.)

Now.  The simplicity of this is incredible: learn to love your life.  Learn to fill your life with the things you love.  Learn to create the experiences that bring you joy.  Learn to accept what you’re feeling and follow it without shame, without hesitation, without concern for what it means to other people’s happiness.  The truth they never tell us is that the well of joy, happiness, abundance, and experience is infinite.  There is no limit to what can make us happy, we just have to listen to our heart and souls over the external voices telling us what constitutes success, joy, or happiness.  Our internal systems are pretty damn smart but we learn to silence them to sustain the masses and end up miserable.  We listen to every voice but our own thinking they will give us the answers we already know.

The truth is you don’t hate your life, you hate living a life that isn’t for you.  You hate living a prescribed life outside of what works for you.  You hate forcing your square peg into the round hole, complaining the edges hurt while you cut away the parts of you that make you who you are.  When we add more of what gives us joy, we feel different.  We learn to fill our own cups and suddenly we see that well—the reason it was infinite is because there is a well in each of us and we are meant to fill it every day, fill it so much that it spills over into the world.  We aren’t meant to drain ourselves for the sake of others, we aren’t in competition, we are meant to complement each other.  No, that doesn’t mean complete each other, we very much need to have our whole picture in tact so we can bring all of us to the table.  We are meant to work with each other, keep the table round so we can bring the full scope of us, and make a bigger picture, one that fits us as we are.

The first step to this is to create a life you love.  Let go of the anger and the pain—and the act of letting go in itself can be painful, scary even.  I’ve identified with anger for far too long, so that means telling myself a different story.  If we learn to lean into our internal guidance we hear the voice letting us know the way and the story we are meant to tell unfolds.  There is no real secret to this, it’s simply a matter of trusting yourself enough to decide to let go of what you thought you needed, what you were told you needed, and stepping into what you KNOW you need.  Time is too short to waste it on a life you don’t love.  Time is the best resource we have and it is ours to do with as we please.  There is no rule that says we have to work, function, or buy into a certain way of being-we created that rule.  If it doesn’t make you happy then walk away.  Focus on filling that well with joy and you will see a life filled with joy instead of asking for permission to feel good on your days off.  Fall in love with life.  Love being alive and love sharing your life with others.  See the gift of this existence and share it with the world.