It’s ok to be and want different things at 40 than what we did at 20.  This was something I never anticipated could be an issue for me.  I honestly always thought I had a pretty solid handle on what I wanted and it took me a long time to reconcile that there were certain things I had worked really hard for that I simply didn’t want anymore.  I couldn’t understand how my brain could focus so intensely on something and want it so badly but then suddenly give it up.  I know that a lot of that came from anxiety and the OCD that comes with it, the fixation on an outcome.  It also came from the desire to be perceived as someone who could do the things they set out to do—proving myself.  But as I started to dig a bit more, I started to see that it came from the fear of letting go of what I knew.  Even if it seemed childish, that was what I knew.  Plus, if you believe in the astrological things, I’m an Aries so I tend to want to prove that I’m right for no other reason than I want to be right.  I spent a lot of time placating other people and building them up, so there were moments I started craving the spotlight so to speak. 

Regardless, as I spoke with my mentor the other day, I had a moment where I understood a fundamental part of my issue was simply that I truly didn’t want some of the same things anymore.  All of that effort and all the stuff I did, I didn’t have the same feelings about it as I used to.  I didn’t have the same desire for it that I used to, it didn’t seem as important.  I’ve spent so much time fighting to keep things in my life a certain way, partially because of wanting to control, but mainly because that was what I knew.  If I kept it the same, if I kept telling myself that’s what I wanted, I felt I knew myself and had a sense of security.  The life I’m living is exactly what I want, right?  My life started to feel claustrophobic and overwhelming.  Suddenly I had all of these things around me and none of it felt right—it felt overwhelming and scary and like I couldn’t get a clear vision on myself.  That’s when I realized that it wasn’t a matter of continually doing anything—it was a matter of doing the right things, the things that moved my life forward in a way I wanted.  The person I was becoming was no longer interested in the things I had worked so hard for. 

I’m still working to find the peace in there because I attached my identity HARD to the things around me.  My memories were firmly locked in there and having those things around me told the story I knew.  I’ve reconciled part of this because I understand that I’ve been talking about conscious evolution for so long that I’ve discounted my own.  I am no longer who I was at 20 and instead of wasting years lamenting over what I’ve lost, I can simply look at the success around me and make decisions about what still serves and what doesn’t.  Keep what works, gratefully release the rest.  When we hold ourselves to the standards and interests we used to have, we are trying to be the person we used to be.  We have to let that version go at some point.  It’s very rare that someone finds who they are at 20 and knows their purpose, not that it can’t happen.  But what is more likely is that we start to feel differently and feel the need to expand and that requires different experiences.  And that need for change is ok.  The more we resist and try to cling to what we knew, the longer we delay the magic of the life we are meant to have.

The truth is it was never about the things—it was about how we identified with those things.  It was never about wanting something and then needing to fixate until that exact thing happens.  There are millions of moments of life between deciding on what we want and actually getting what we want so it would be foolish to discount anything that came in between as a waste of time.  Things are introduced to us exactly when we need them—yes, some as distraction to see if we stay the course, but others simply because we need them to understand what our purpose really is.  And we need to remember that our purpose may be different at different stages of life—and that is ok.  Allow the growth, allow the development of new skills, allow our own evolution.  It’s only then that we can comfortably and confidently assert what it is we need/want in this world.  We need to dip into what we don’t know in order to understand what we need to know.  The answers are all there if we trust ourselves, we just can’t think we knew all the answers at 20.  Take what we know and trust ourselves, the path may change direction every now and then, but as long as we stay on our path, everything else falls into place.