“I regret making the mistake of not riding the wave when it comes. I didn’t realize that I was behind the wheel,” Jennifer Coolidge.  Sometimes we forget that we are in control, that we have the power to decide which direction we go.  When things come our way that feel too good to be true or that we aren’t sure if they are really for us, we have a tendency to shy away.  We are meant to lean into life and to enjoy the moment.  To immerse ourselves instead of merely wading.  Life is filled with peaks and valleys, ebbs and flows, the waves and the pull of the tide—this is simply the cycle and way of life.  It can be scary in those high moments because we aren’t sure how to handle that position, but the beauty of that position is that we can see everything around us.  We can see for miles—all it took was a new vantage point.  At that point it can still be hard to accept where we are at because we aren’t comfortable with that position.  Many of us are so accustomed to the climb that we don’t know how to rest at the top.  It takes time and practice to acclimate to it.

As someone who spent my life trying to make the waves happen because I didn’t take the opportunity at the time it presented itself, I wholeheartedly felt Coolidge when she said that.  I don’t know why my training insisted that the opportunities that came to me weren’t for me, that I wasn’t worthy of them.  I passed them up thinking that when it was really for me it would show up again.  Some did—many did not.  I spent a lot of years in regret but I’ve come to understand that this is part of my lesson as well.  I had to learn my worth in order to not sacrifice the things meant for me.  To not give up the chances to help others with what I know.  To not give up the chances for fun and to lean into life.  To learn how to ride the wave.  To enjoy the success at the top—and to orient myself to what that feels like so it became the natural state over struggle. 

As Coolidge states, she was behind the wheel.  Life can feel predatory at times because there is always someone who benefits from our naïveté or our lack of confidence.  Once we realize that we have the power to remove ourselves from that scenario, we see how much control we have over our decisions.  No, we don’t always have a say in what happens to us but we always have a say in how we handle it.  We always have a say in the choices we make given the circumstances.  When we have the high ground it’s an opportunity to see things in a new way and we can trust that if we got there, if we did the work. then we are supposed to be there.  We also need to understand that we don’t need to constantly be striving for the higher peaks—we can observe for a minute to decide which way to go.  It’s all our choice.  All of it.  The most important part of the message is this: be present and allow the moment to be what it is.  We get where we are through our actions and beliefs so trust it and adapt as we get there.  If you swam out in the water, trust the wave is yours.