“How much longer will you continue to say not yet?” Tabitha Brown.  What an absolute beautiful follow up to yesterday’s post about getting out of our own way, I swear I can’t make up the timing of when these messages come through. We are clearly being told: We are the ones holding ourselves back. We keep asking for the thing and then backing out.  We keep saying we’re not ready by not aligning with the vibration and frequency of the thing.  That alignment means giving up what we knew—it means getting out of our own way.  It means believing in ourselves fully, and when that belief takes over, suddenly we see everything we’ve been looking for.  Let’s put this in perspective with an easy:  We have a desire to write a book.  Instead of sitting and starting the work, we save files, we take notes, we record information but we tell ourselves it isn’t enough so we never actually sit and start the work.  Let’s dig a little deeper.  We have a desire to be rich and to not worry about money but every time we spend money, we feel guilt or fear.  Or we spend frivolously and waste our resources.  That’s telling the universe we aren’t ready to align with what we say we want.

Sometimes the truth of how we refuse our gifts is pretty blatant.  Others are quieter.  We think we are being modest when we are being self-deprecating.  We think we are being helpful when we are being taken advantage of.  We think we are being loyal by staying where we are being hurt.  We think we are being responsible when we stay in a toxic environment.  Anything can change when our priorities change.  The world opens when we shift our focus.  We’ve spoken many times about energy and focus—specifically energy flows where focus goes.  So when we remove the engrained and indoctrinated ideas like loyalty, modesty, responsibility to people and we replace them with loyalty to ourselves and source first, humility and understanding, and alignment with our path/responsibility to ourselves, the cup starts to fill and run over.  That’s when the magic happens.  We are trained to believe that we can’t handle that kind of magic and power but the truth is we ARE that magic and power.  We are all meant to share that kind of light and that message. 

So the reminder is two fold: 1. let go of the things that create our blocks.  Get really honest and look at the gaps between what we say we want and what we are doing to achieve it.  Learn how to get out of our own way. 2. Believe we are capable of handling it and stop self-sabotaging—get out of the way and start aligning with what works.  Start aligning with the new way of being.  Remember to follow through.  Stop questioning our worth and whether we deserve the thing and start recognizing the gift as our own and align with it.  The rest will take care of itself.  We just have to learn to let go of what we thought we knew and stop delaying what is ours.  It’s waiting for us to take it and create something big with it.  It’s waiting for us to pick it up and run with it.  If we feel it, if we think it, we can create it here in this reality.  Stop saying not yet and start working on one step at a time.  Have patience and belief and start the work.  That’s all it takes: one shift in mindset and taking action.  Instead of not yet, it becomes yes, now.

Get out of the way to see the way.  Over the last few weeks we’ve talked a lot about perception, setting the tone, clarifying goals, and honoring purpose.  Today I want to talk about how we block ourselves because there are so many ways we stop ourselves from achieving greatness, many of them unconscious or subconscious to us.  Sometimes when we feel stuck, we need to understand that we have to go back to the start in order to figure it out.  I’m not saying rehash every moment in our lives until we resolve every issue—we can’t redo time but we can learn to reconcile how we feel about it.  Much of what we deal with, much of what we carry stems from the time we formed our opinion of ourselves, our abilities, and what we saw around us during our formative years.  In order to progress, we have to move that junk out of the way because we know with a clear path we can move forward.

The subconscious blocks are things we have like the automatic habits or thoughts as we move throughout our day.  The thought, “I don’t have enough money,” or, “I wish he/she would stop doing this,” or even, “I hate my job/car/house/situation/bank balance etc. etc. etc.” are things that stop us from achieving what we want to because we are blocking the potential for what can be with negative thoughts around what already exists.  If we aren’t grateful for what we have and if we don’t appreciate what it took to get there, then what makes us think that we would be able to handle more or an elevated circumstance?  We have to resolve our mindset in order to progress.  We have to manage the thoughts and control our pattern of thought if we are going to work from a new paradigm.  It’s about shifting the energy. 

There are times we don’t want to admit that we are responsible for our own blocks.  It seems counterintuitive.  Why would we ever stop ourselves from achieving what we want?  Why would se stop ourselves from feeling good and being successful?  Because we aren’t used to that.  Because it doesn’t feel familiar.  Because it doesn’t feel good at the start.  Waking up and getting out of our own way can feel like waking up with a bad hangover or a terrible dream.  It’s heavy, it can be painful, and it’s exhausting at times.  Learning an entirely new way of life and a new way of functioning takes practice and time and it is work—it’s just more rewarding work.  If we seek to get to the other side, that is the work we must do.  We must learn to take responsibility for what is blocking us and work toward the other side.  It isn’t like flipping a light switch.  It’s like changing one bulb at a time until the entire path is illuminated.  And once it is lit, it is glorious.  Choose to see where we aren’t stuck.  Choose to move forward.  Do the work and step out of the way.

Be a thermostat, not a thermometer—we set the tone, we don’t react to the environment.  I like this one as a follow up to the idea of chasing freedom and letting go of stress.  As animals, we naturally react to the circumstances around us—we are designed to constantly evaluate for danger and to respond through fight or flight.  Our bodies respond to stress the same way we would a predator.  The other side of this is that we are also trained to adapt to our surroundings so when we are constantly exposed to stress on a regular basis, our body begins to adapt and get used to being in stress.  Like we spoke about on Saturday, we can choose how we respond to the environment.  We can choose our viewpoint and we can choose to shift how we perceive the situation.  That is how we become a thermostat.  The more we decide how we feel in a given situation and the more we decide how we WANT to feel, the easier it is to set the field.  We don’t have to react to everything, we can decide where and how to expend our energy. 

When it comes to success in life, success in our goals, and success with managing/achieving our dreams, we need to have a level of control.  As I mentioned the other day, we have a lot we can control internally, so determining how we feel and how we will react is key.  We have that power.  When we allow ourselves to constantly react to the situation around us, we are always behind the 8 ball so to speak. More accurately, we become the target ball, waiting for something to hit us and tell us which way to go.  Learning to set the tone in a given space, learning to operate with intention puts us further ahead than being swayed by what’s happening.  This is different than flow, because there is a balance between being in flow and being taken by flow and reacting.  I want to clarify again that this isn’t about control, this is about controlling ourselves.  When we keep the focus on the goal, we operate differently.  We decide differently.  That means we get different results.

I want to be clear that we all need to have the ability to be a thermostat at some points in our lives.  We need to be able to read the room with the context and purpose of whether or not it aligns with our goals.  But once we get the read on the environment, we can decide if we are going to work to shift that atmosphere or if we are going to walk away.  There are a lot of unknown factors in this life, but if we can gain emotional control and decide what actions are in alignment with our goals and purpose, it becomes easier to see the truth of what is happening, determine what works for us, and to choose to walk away from things that no longer serve including stress and people who inhibit growth.  There is power in setting the thermostat in our lives and there is freedom in choosing what we focus on and what we engage with.  Don’t let others distract from what our focus needs to be.  Set the tone, don’t react.  

Today I am grateful for belief and alignment, specifically the feeling that happens when fostered by belief and alignment.  I’ve recently made some decisions that involved taking control of my life at a new level.  Something finally clicked where I understood the magnitude of taking action.  Yes, I’ve always known this, yes I still have old habits and fears, but making a choice that simultaneously feels good, brings results, and feels natural is unlike anything else.  I too often vacillated between this feeling and feeling like crap or like I was obligated to feel differently.  Like there would be some reward at the end for feeling miserable.  While waiting for some answers at my 9-5, it hit me: I’m waiting for someone to make a decision about my life for me and that is the furthest thing from what I want to do.  Knowing what I want to do and believing that I’m able to take action—and then taking action—changed that.  We have one life and I do not want to wait for someone to make a choice for me in what I’m doing.  I want to be in this alignment all the time.  I believe that it is possible to feel this good when we remove ourselves from the negativity and when we are doing what we know we are meant to do.  I choose to follow that path even if it takes some time to walk that path.   

Today I am grateful for the creative surge.  I have come to understand that I am an incredibly creative individual and that involves getting away from the standard or accepted way of doing things.  I was trying for a long time to keep a foot planted in the world I was in because it pays the bills as well as moving toward something more fulfilling.  Accepting myself for who I am and being honest about what I enjoy shifted me toward more possibilities and has opened the door to new ways of doing things.  My brain goes a million miles an hour but it used to be negative, fearful thoughts.  Now those thoughts trend toward creation.  It can be overwhelming because I’m trying to capture each of the creative ideas, but it’s an overwhelm of love. It’s an overwhelm of joy at the possibilities of expression in what I’m doing.  I love being in that flow, in that energy where anything can happen.  The goal isn’t always notoriety or getting something out of it, the creative process is there for its own merit.

Today I am grateful for time.  Our family has a ton of October birthdays so we are in the thick of many celebrations.  The age range is vast (spanning over 75 years in some cases) so it’s fascinating to see how people feel and what their lives/emotions look like at different stages of the game.  We are never promised anything (even more reason to do the things that make sense for us and feel aligned with our purpose/who we are) and understanding how valuable life is, is key.  If we are gifted with the privilege of life, it is our responsibility to fill that life with love, joy, connection, and purpose.  It is our responsibility to put aside the distraction and block out the messages of fear and hurt others spread thinking they are being helpful or realistic.  There are absolutely moments of reality that we need to contend with and make amends with, but what they don’t’ tell us is that this world is also of a different reality: the reality that we are meant to live in expansiveness, creating joy and flow and building new ways.  Use time well, create time by doing things you love. 

Today I am grateful for friends that care.  These last few months have been incredibly busy.  It got to the point where I wasn’t sure how much more we could fit in and we were still being asked to participate and do things—the weekends were full and weeknights were becoming a tight squeeze as well.  I have been working with my family on saying yes more because I know we need to get ourselves out there into new experiences and I don’t want our lives to become all work and no play.  With that being said, we’ve had many nights where we were consecutively booked with multiple things, yesterday was one of them.  The first event we went to went a bit longer than we thought and I didn’t make the best choices as far as self-care goes.  When we got to the second event for the evening, my friends knew I wasn’t feeling the greatest and instead of encouraging more bad choices they offered food.  I told them I was ok and didn’t want to impose.  When I went upstairs, my friend had already prepared a plate for me.  I didn’t know it at first, but that simple act was exactly what I needed.  It was so sweet—and that is real caring.  Friends who do things that make you healthy, not tear you down.

Today I am grateful for opportunity.  Do you ever notice how sometimes when we think things are falling apart, if we get over our fear and really break it down, it isn’t that bad—not only is it better than we thought, but perhaps we’re totally off base and the issue is completely solvable with a simple action.  I’ve always been one of those people who was afraid to look at the reality of a situation if I thought it got too bad.  Just as an example, money.  If I overspent or if things were legitimately tight, I’d be terrified to check my bank account, but when I finally did, I’d see that I was always perfectly fine.  My husband and I have been working our business for several years and we are in the weeds of it now.  I had been so overwhelmed with how to move forward and I didn’t want to look at any of the data because I was afraid that it would be so bad that it would show what we’ve/I’ve been doing for the last several years was all for nothing.  Instead, I just found out that there is a new opportunity for me and I am closer to where I want to be—like months closer.  We just need to finish a few more things and I can’t believe how much life is going to change.  Never be afraid—go for it.  We may be surprised how close we actually are and that the situation isn’t as overwhelming/scary as we made it out to be.  Take the deep breath, tear off the band-aid, and take some action.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead. 

Pull your head out of stress and look at the beauty of life—Chase freedom.  I think we all just needed a little reminder about focus in life.  We have chosen stress as a badge of honor and it becomes addictive.  Like any addiction, we don’t truly enjoy being in that state but we are familiar with it and we feel we know how to function when we are under stress.  That way of functioning is a distraction like so many other things around us.  When we are distracted we miss the beauty of things around us, the beauty of life.  There is this amazing natural flow, this ebb and flow of life that brings us exactly where we need to be if we learn to let go of the reins and start working with life as it is.  It takes a lot to release fear, especially fear of the unknown because we are used to what we know—and what we know is fear of what can happen.  The truth is there are certain events that are going to happen no matter what we do.  Knowing that, we need to understand that what we can control is both limited and infinite.

We can choose our vantage point for every circumstance.  We can choose our reaction.  We can choose our emotion.  We can choose the words we say.  We can’t always choose what happens, but we are able to choose our part in it.  We can choose what we engage with and what we walk away from.  We can set our boundaries and follow our path.  We choose who we surround ourselves with and how we expend our energy.  We choose to follow creative outlets.  We have no say in what the people around us do.  We have no say in how they react to us or how they treat us.  We have no say in their decisions.  We are able to decide to not to take it personally and simply move on.  We also have the ability to understand that 90% of our stress is self-created.  When we look at it that way, we need to ask why we would waste our creative energy on causing pain for ourselves.  There are far better ways to use our energy.

When we open up to the beauty of life and see the possibilities, when we choose to follow our path, when we choose to see the good, suddenly we are free.  It’s like taking off the blinders and seeing all the good that exists in the world and understanding it was always there.  We have to ask ourselves why we live in a society that wants to keep us from such an existence.  What benefit do they have keeping us in a state of fear and stress?  It keeps us repeating the pattern, the cycle, and it keeps the system going that benefits the few.  When we decide to see the beauty and live in that state, we cast aside all the fears and old programming of what it meant to be to live.  We see that there are all of these other ways that we have options for.  When we rise above the fear and stress, we are free.  There is very little that can disrupt us in the way of peace when we understand our purpose and we take control of our decisions.  Choose how we want to feel and go with that.  Don’t chase the same thing others have told us provide value—chase freedom and living how we want to live so we can connect with the ultimate purpose and goal: freedom for ourselves and others to live how we are meant to live.  Change the focus.      

Life is fragile and we are guaranteed nothing.  Aside from being grateful for the lives we have and honoring our gifts, we need to ask what we want from life.  The answer to that question determines how we spend our time and sets the stage for the course we take.  Life moves quickly and things change so it’s important to have a constant, a sort of North star.  We have to ask ourselves some key questions to help us navigate.  The biggest question is do we need status and accolades or are we looking for freedom and impact?  Those are very different things, very different courses in life.  I can’t say one has more merit than the other because that is a personal choice, but what I can say is that the answer to that question gets us different results in life.  I do know that as I’m getting older, I understand our greatest gifts are to be loved and remembered.  The way we feel about ourselves and the way others feel around us is far more impactful than asking what we can get from people.

We look for immediate gratification and we look to see our names in neon lights because we are told that is the ultimate goal.  There is a saying that people will forget what you said and what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel.  So having the attention for a brief time is fleeting.  Our legacy is the feeling we left in people, the courage we gave people to pursue their dreams, the light we leave behind that we ignite in others.  Legacy is nothing without meaning—it all becomes moot if we simply take the action without intention behind it.  When we consider how we use our gifts and how we spend our time, the intention makes a difference. With all the distraction today, it’s easy to misinterpret our intention.  We think that attention is what we need or that we have to have the big house.  The reality is most of us are actually looking for the freedom to call our own shots and spend our time how we want to.  The ability to create something lasting is more impactful than our five minutes in the spotlight. 

It’s important to note that things like status and accolades can be taken away.  Money, houses, cars, pretty much any possession we have can be taken away.  The love we have, the love we leave, the lessons we share, the advice we lend, the conversations we have, the beliefs we impart, the hope we instill, the trust we build, the time we spend, the more we see others and hear them—all of that is lasting.  I’ve mentioned before that we don’t necessarily have to change the whole world in order to have an impact—we may change the world for one person.  We create ripples in this life that we may never see the end of, we are in a web so intricately woven that we are all connected and we may never see all of the intersections.  Our choices matter, our lives matter, our actions matter.  It’s the small things that are the big things—our values and character are far more lasting than anything we can buy.  Choose the type of impact we are looking to have and no matter the events of our lives, we can say we gave our best and our actions mattered. 

Your struggles end when your gratitude begins. Being grateful shifts the energy of the world—it shifts the energy in our individual world first.  Sometimes I feel ashamed at how many years I wasted feeling/playing the victim.  We all have moments when we are victimized, some of us just stay in them longer.  The truth is there is so much beauty in this world and we waste a lot of time looking at what isn’t over what is, and we see what is missing instead of the gifts that are here.  As soon as we shift that outlook and take the time to sit in the appreciation of what is, we see how much abundance exists in our lives.  There are things we have materially that others don’t, there are gifts we have to express that others don’t.  Outside the realm of have/have not is the idea that we are given opportunities to be who we are and share that light with others.  It is a gift to have the ideas we do and the fact that we can take ownership of them and create something with our lives is a gift.      

One thing we struggle to wrap our heads around is the idea that we are owed anything.  This isn’t a contradictory statement about our worth, it’s a reminder that this life is a gift.  The fact that we wake up every day and have another chance to take action toward our dreams is a gift because we could easily not wake up.  The fact we have a safe place to sleep, eat, have clothes, have means to read this piece, all of that is a gift.  Not everyone has the means or the will to see their gifts through, not everyone has the idea or the drive to make things happen.  Some people aren’t able to take the ingredients of their lives and make something of it—like if we can’t make heads or tails of an experience so instead wallow in figuring out why something happened instead of taking action based on the event.  We are given all of the ingredients to make a life we love, sometimes we just have to learn how to put it all together. 

The most important aspect of gratitude are the possibilities.  The more grateful we are, the more possibilities we see in everything.  There is less likelihood to put a negative interpretation on events because we see them simply as things that happen, new data to make a new decision.  Gratitude opens the doors because we have shifted the framework of our minds and in some cases, even opened the doors.  So many of the problems we have are in our own head.  There are certainly external events, but how we cope with them is completely up to us.  The choices we make surrounding the event are up to us.  We can choose to play victim or even play perfectionist thinking that we have control over the situation.  Or we can choose to relax and allow and let go of the struggle through reframing our perception.  We hold the key in our perception.  Let go of the struggle.     

Motivation gets you started, discipline keeps you going, irritation helps you plow through.  This is just a little reminder about perspective.  I have a tendency to stop and start things over and over again and then get really annoyed or even disheartened with myself.  Like we spoke about yesterday, I will realize that I’m repeating patterns that keep me stuck instead of working toward the goal, and then I get annoyed with myself and struggle to get back on track.  There is an additional purpose to irritation that we didn’t discuss yesterday: that is the fortitude to push.  The truth is there are times we simply need the brute force and the demand to pull ourselves back on track.  I have a ton of motivation to start projects.  The creative energy flows and I want to do everything all at once.  I had/have a bad habit of actually starting a ton of things at once and not being able to make heads or tails of what needs to be done next.  That is where discipline comes in.  We need to be able to determine the actions that will move the needle and follow through on them. Now back to irritation.

Sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves for falling off track again doesn’t help anything.  We need to give ourselves a reality check and cut the crap.  Sometimes it’s hardest to be honest with ourselves and look at what we are doing and the impact it has on our goals.  The only thing stopping us from living the life we want to live and doing the things we want to do is ourselves.  It’s human nature to get off track every now and then.  We need to learn that doesn’t make us a victim, it makes us a creature of habit, perhaps a bit of an addict to the way things are/a certain feeling.  That is something we can take control of.  We can learn to set up our environment for success (I wrote a piece on that a few weeks ago) so that way we are making decisions in line with the goal.  Eliminate the distraction, keep the determination, and have the humility to see when we need to direct some irritation at ourselves.  It’s great to start things, it’s fantastic to have creative energy, but it’s even more rewarding to follow through and see the results of our dreams.  Keep going, keep directing, and keep correcting.  Eventually we will get there.

“Get irritated, take up space, go after your dreams.  You can’t sit there and hope that things will change because we will be waiting forever.  Do the things you need to do in order to make your dreams happen,” Danielle S.  Even though this is a reminder we all need, I feel this was timely for myself.  There are times we move through our days thinking we are making moves or that we are heading toward our goals only to wake up and realize we are on repeat, stuck in the cycle again.  It’s so easy to convince ourselves that the things we do are necessary and to trust what we’ve known, to believe what we know keeps us safe.  We’ve spoken about safety here many times and I think we understand that just because we are familiar with something that doesn’t mean it’s safe.  We repeat some of the most unhealthy habits daily because we are comfortable.  I heard this quote about getting irritated and, well, I got irritated.  I was irritated because I realized I had become comfortable again under the guise of things I “had” to do. 

In the course of following our dreams, the goal is ultimately to get a little bit better each day.  To get a little bit closer to the goal each day.  If we stay the course, we eventually hit the target even if it takes some time.  But when we continually fall into the habit of doing what is known, what we consider safe, we end up further away from our dreams because that known path is a circle—and not even a spiral where we are able to get some movement, it’s literally the same path over and over again.  Life is supposed to be expansive and creative and doing the known thing isn’t really going to create the growth we are looking for.  Repeating the same steps will make us familiar—and even really good at taking those steps—but it won’t get us closer to where we need to go.  Going up and down the same steps a million times is certainly a lot of work but it doesn’t move us anywhere. 

My irritation is fully directed at myself.  I have goals and dreams (perhaps that need to be more clearly defined) and instead of doing things that move me toward those goals and dreams consistently, I find myself repeating the same day.  That’s not something I care to repeat any longer.  This is the moment we’ve spoken about before: the fear of stepping into the unknown.  There are still things that I’m not able to fully let go of because I have a family to care for, that is true—I need something to create the same stability I have in that regard.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not able to make different choices or at least one different choice every day.  Instead of spending an hour at lunch, I can take 30 minutes of that to write or produce content.  Instead of coming home and immediately focusing on work or my son’s homework, we can move our bodies a bit more.  I made the mistake most people do which is believing we have to be all in with all the changes all at once.  That’s when we get overwhelmed and seek out the familiar again.  Instead, keep that irritation with the familiar fresh, and find ways to change one small habit every day.  Or work on one habit until it changes everyday and then work toward the next goal.  Soon, instead of going after our dreams, we will be living them.

See it when I believe it—allow the physical to catch up energetically.  I think I’ve spoken about this before and I think I’ve even mentioned my struggles with it.  I’ve always been pretty scientifically based even though I love magic and spirituality.  But it took me a long time to get there because I was always searching for a sign that my spirituality was validated.  Regardless, I needed proof that something existed.  I didn’t know how to ease my way into trust, grace, and faith.  While I was taught the basics of religion, I was never taught the concept of trusting our faith which is a vastly different task.  Faith is about the energy and the mindset while religion is about the rules—and rules can follow natural law or man’s law.  I understood law-it was tangible and visible and something we were all expected to operate from.  That was a universal understanding.  Thus the appeal of science: it was universal and a language for all of us to understand.  It wasn’t an interpretation, it was a principle.

I understand now that faith and spirituality are principles based in science as well.  Our faith and trust can be measured by our responses and actions and we can see the results in what we receive.  It’s a matter of energy.  I heard this discussion the other day and it flipped my thinking on the matter of seeing things before we believe them and it was simply this: we sometimes have to allow things time to manifest.  We are allowing things we put out energetically to catch up physically.  This is something I can get behind.  There is a delay in the sound wave reaching our ear, it doesn’t mean there is silence just because we don’t hear it immediately—someone else is hearing it, the sound exists.  Even more of a mind twist is that the interpretation of that sound is different so someone experiencing the same thing will have a different result.  This is how we end up with different stories from the same events in our lives. 

Applying such a belief to something less tangible can be challenging but the truth is our entire lives were once intangible and we brought it into existence.  The jobs, the homes, the clothes we wear, the food we eat.  All of these day to day activities are a result of decisions we make.  Nothing happened until we decided it was so and we acted on it.  The same is true for our energy.  We decide where to focus it and then we allow the physical to catch up.  My entire issue was about proof and the universe isn’t here to prove anything to us.  It is here to work with us and we are here to understand the energy and get in rhythm with it—the universe isn’t here to owe us anything—we are cocreators.  It’s ok to have faith, it’s ok to learn how to get into alignment, and it’s ok to be scared along the way. We need to practice trust both in our abilities and in the universe.  We need to practice adaptability and faith.  Trust the dance and know the path we are on will eventually yield the results.