“There’s always a cost and a payoff.  Every decision or action has pros and cons, it’s up to you to decide which direction the balance falls in a choice you are facing.  Weigh up what makes logical sense, then check in with how you really feel in your heart and what you sense in your gut as this can be what tips the scales.  What are we willing to put in and what will we get out of it?” Wild Lotus Tarot.  This is along the same lines as your new life is going to cost you your old one.  We can’t manage to live multiple lives at once.  The human is infinite things, but we aren’t infinite all at once, it doesn’t work like that.  I’ve shared stories about straddling two lives at once, how the tracks were getting farther and farther apart and I needed to make a choice about which side I was on.  I never really shared that I never wanted to commit or pay the price for either side.  I wanted to know what I would get out of something, all of the caveats and hidden things that would come with it.  I spent so much time not committing that I never took a chance on much. 

I didn’t understand that life was created through decisions.  I always wanted to make the right decision and in doing that, I often faced analysis paralysis.  We all know what happens when we get there: nothing.  I thought life kind of worked on a reward system.  We would get what we want if we behaved a certain way or if we did certain things, like it was transactional.  I could put in an order and get what I wanted if I paid the price.  In so many scenarios that just didn’t happen and I felt completely disheartened and angry with the world.  Especially when I began judging people and felt like I had done more to “deserve” what they had.  I know now that it was jealousy and ego and that I would have to learn to be responsible for my choices no matter what they were.   What I learned is this: beyond a cost and a payoff, life sometimes tests us and teaches us.  It’s a way to learn what we really want.  The truth is that when we are aligned with what we are meant to do, who we are, and what we truly feel, nothing about what we choose feels like a cost.  It’s energy and work we are happy to expend.  It doesn’t seem like work.  That isn’t to say that it isn’t work, it’s just that it feels good, like we are in flow, in connection with source. 

I think the other point of this is it’s a matter of how we label it.  The results are what we make them, what we believe them to be—and quite literally, sometimes life just is.  It’s not good OR bad, it just happens.  We are so trained to label a circumstance so we can make sense of it in our minds but that isn’t always possible.  Some people have an innate gift of seeing the good in everything no matter what while others play the victim.  I’m sure we’ve all done both at some point.  If what happens teaches us something, we can decide if it’s good or bad.  There doesn’t have to be a cost if we understand the value in it.  In that regard everything becomes an asset whether it’s a lesson or a loss—so in a very real sense, everything is a gain.  The only thing I can say with 100% certainty is that if we don’t make any kind of decision, nothing will ever happen.  We will always be stuck.  The cost of that is a life unlived, and what a waste that is.  So, we do the best we can with what we know and with what we feel.  We consider what we want to feel and what we want to do with our lives.  And then we take a deep breath and take the leap.  We learn more and we move forward.

Attract what you want by being it, we attract what we are, not what we think.  A short, simple reminder that words don’t count for much in the grand picture of energy.  The brain truly can’t tell the difference between what we are thinking and if something is actually happening, but our external experience is very clear on the matter.  We either see it or we don’t because it is either there or it isn’t.  The truth is all of those possibilities exist, we don’t see them because we aren’t matching it.  We can say anything we want but that doesn’t mean we embody it.  Joe Dispenza talks about the disconnect between mind and body and the answer is simple: our words and actions are on two different frequencies.  If we are looking to shift the frequency, we need to match it, and beyond that, we need to embody what we are talking about.  Become that version. 

When we talk about awakening, we talk about what makes us feel alive, what makes us feel whole.  We talk about a new understanding for ourselves and others around us.  When it comes to awakening, there is a degree of coming alive.  The excitement of new experiences and thoughts and ideas and the even greater thrill of planning and starting a project and seeing it through.  There is a different side to this as well.  A coming alive that can only happen with death.  There is a lot to say about the cost of a new life being the old one (I will reference that later this week as well), and it is true.  It isn’t physically possible in some cases to manage and maintain what we knew in the context of what we are learning.  Simply put, what we knew before doesn’t apply to where we are now, or where we want to go.  Those things got us here, but they aren’t going to get us where we are going.  I struggled to reconcile the pieces of my past that gave me comfort, joy, and familiarity.  I had to understand that I held on to those so tightly because they were the bright moments, moments I loved.   Moments that made me feel safe.  I had to understand that I wasn’t meant to repeat those moments over and over again, like some little parrot copy of what my parents wanted for themselves.    

I had to learn to let their dreams die so I could live my own.  I had to let my comfort no longer be a priority. I had to let my fear die so I could trust myself.  Even when I thought I was on the right path for me, I had to let my ego die, the knowledge I thought I had.  I had to let go of the idea that I knew exactly what I wanted, exactly who I was because those experiences that brought me there were limited.  I had to learn to swim in the deep end instead of living in the shallows of talking about a scenario that would be nice to see some day.  I had to let go of the identity of myself as a victim. Frankly, I had to let go of any identity I had, and that was a death.  It’s disconcerting to let go of what we know or think we know about who we are only to see we haven’t the slightest clue because the version of ourselves that we know isn’t really who we want to be at all.  But it’s even more disconcerting to wake up years later, after pretending to be that version of ourselves only to see that nothing around us is what we wanted.       

Saying goodbye and letting go is never easy, especially when it comes to identity and self.  We feel like we know who we are and we wrap up every decision we make in that definition.  But certain events, choices, and changes in our lives require a breaking down of that definition.  It requires a discovery of who we really are and a means to bring that out. And that means putting down everything we knew and becoming someone new.  While those pieces of us that got us here will always remain, they are no longer the drivers.  We lovingly wrap them and lay them to rest.  Letting those new buds emerge can be a scary thing.  We are vulnerable, but the only way to become is to emerge from the safety of what we knew and step into who we are.  Welcome the new, wake up to it.  Come alive in the death of what we knew and create who we are.     

“Sometimes people self-sabotage when they’re so used to things taking a turn for the worst in their lives.  They become anxious in peaceful relationships and environments because they’re anticipating the bad.  They’re not used to calmness or healthy energy so they create their own chaos unintentionally or leave,”  Soulmuva.  Guilty.  There are days I still don’t know how to function if something isn’t going wrong.  I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The thing is this: we can understand it but we have to change the energy. It took a lot for me to see all the ways I self-sabotage—no one likes to admit when they are their own worst enemy or the cause of their own problems.  I think that’s one thing we can all agree on is that we are used to playing the victim in this world.  For as much as we are attracted to strength, we glorify when things happen to us—even if something is blatantly our fault, we like to find ways to say someone made us do it.  Here’s the thing: when we take ownership for those events, we take back the power to change it.

We have a tendency to judge ourselves and get caught in the labeling of a situation.  So if we admit we make a mistake we take it further to that we are a mistake, we are bad, etc.  That isn’t the point of taking ownership of the situation.  The point is to take back power and direction over where the situation goes.  Instead, we get comfortable playing the victim and it makes it easy to constantly look for the way things AREN’T our fault.  It becomes an unintentional (or intentional for some) way to get things, a manipulation tactic.  Even if it isn’t something we are consciously using, we become used to it, we get used to the feeling and, as humans, as animals looking for safety in familiarity, we repeat the patterns we know.  There is safety in the known even if it’s something that hurts us.  When we grow up around chaos, we anticipate chaos.  It’s challenging to cultivate a different mindset when we are so used to it being a certain way.

I think the best advice we can give each other is this: we need grace for where we are and for where others are.  We need to give change a chance and understand that there are certain circumstances (most circumstances) where people’s behavior is so habitual that they don’t even realize when they’ve repeated a pattern, let alone that they’re creating the same circumstance.  It takes a lot of work to settle and redirect the heart and the mind and even more when we are in a circumstance that would trigger us to go down a certain thought pattern.  It can be difficult to accept that we are worthy of changing the story and the patterns we’ve become accustomed to.  We need to understand that we are all looking for familiarity and comfort to some degree, that just looks different for each of us.  Give people time and space to grow, to learn to feel comfortable under new circumstances—and to react differently in familiar circumstances.  Do the same for ourselves and soon the barometer of what feels good, what feels normal will begin to shift. 

Today I am grateful for doing something different.  I took a break from the heavier material I’m reading and I picked up an easy book.  I’m about half-way through and the premise of the main character is that she has everything mapped out in her life and then it all falls apart.  Cliché or not, the experience is relatable.  The way she experiences the demise of all she knew is sudden and drastic and comes from a misunderstanding but in that coming undone, she finds a hobby, a new thing to occupy her.  And she finds freedom in doing something different.  It’s not the first time I’ve read or seen that type of thing, but something in the context of this story, where she tries so hard to do everything right and it still comes apart, hit me on a different level.  See, sometimes we are holding so tight to a vision that we choke the life right out of it.  We end up stopping all progress instead of letting it move.  We want so badly to make sure all will come together that we freeze it in place and it crumbles.  Lesson learned: trying something new could lead us to exactly the feeling, place, thing we wanted.  Don’t be afraid because it looks different, ask how it feels. 

Today I am grateful for choices.  I’ve realized lately that I truly don’t feel good about certain aspects of the way I am living.  It isn’t about playing victim, it isn’t about what has happened to me, I simply don’t feel good with where I’m at and I know I need to make some new choices.  I have too many things in my life to be grateful for to feel an ounce of anger, fear, regret and I feel those things all the time.  I’ve realized that it’s because I’m choosing to still feel that way.  I’m staying in environments that won’t change because I’m familiar so all the work I’ve done on changing thoughts goes out the window because the place requires the same actions.  I still have numbing and distracting behaviors—and I fall into distraction all the time.  So I’m realizing that in order to make some changes, I need to make different choices.  Yet again, I see that I’ve merely been dipping my toes in.  If I want my life to be a certain way, I need to make it a certain way and that means changing the behavior, which, in short, means new choices and committing to them.  A new life costs the old one so to move forward, I must face it and do what it takes.   

Today I am grateful for the details.  I have been struggling with some decisions at work—what opportunity do I take, what opportunity do I create, what is even going to be available to me.  I have limited information and this is going to solely rely on gut.  So I made a choice and I shared a request with my boss based on my honest opinion on the state of where one of my departments is.  This is a project I’ve loved from the beginning and I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s where I belong.  At the same time, someone I haven’t met in the organization prior to now reached out and I assisted him.  During the course of the conversation, I realized how attentive to detail he was.  We had met less than 10 minutes prior and he recalled details about me that showed me how important it is to pay attention to the details.  In the details we learn about people, we make connections, and we learn new ways of doing things.  I am grateful to see how important it is to get out of our own heads and start focusing on how we can share what we have/know with others.  That kind of bond is priceless.

Today I am grateful for shifting focus.  I’ve beat home how I want things to look for so long that I convinced myself that was the only way/answer.  I’ve gotten half-assed results for half-assed commitment.  Such a narrow focus with little commitment makes it like searching for a diamond in a forest at night with a head lamp and a teaspoon.  Yeah, it can get done but the actions aren’t nearly effective enough.  Similar to choking the life out of the vision I mentioned above, when we only see one path, we turn off the lights to the other doors/opportunities around us.  Sometimes we need to start wake up and work during the day so we can see all the paths in front of us.  Sometimes we need different tools.  And sometimes we need to acknowledge that we know what we are doing isn’t working, there seems to be no point, and it’s time to shift.  I used to think I would miss out on what I really wanted if I focused on other paths because I thought I had to focus on one thing.  Now I see our destiny is always there, we can choose any path to get there.  Some are longer or bumpier, but they all lead to the same place.  The only time we truly stray/go the wrong way is when we walk away from it.  Otherwise, make a choice and follow it. 

Today I am grateful for not throwing away an opportunity.  I overwhelmed myself because I have a lot of irons in the fire.  That isn’t to insinuate that other people don’t, I just have a lot that I’m doing on my own and it all seems in the same stages where nothing is quite off the ground yet.  Some days it literally drives me insane.  I have a lot of feelers out there so I now that part of me is also playing it safe, waiting to see what bites before making a decision on something.  As difficult as that makes it to wait for something to come through, I am glad to still have some lines in the water.  Some of them are for things I think have something behind them, something that I don’t have a super clear vision for, but a feeling that it’s something I’m supposed to do.  Sometimes a vision is all it takes.  Sometimes all it takes is standing firm and doing what we know is the right thing.  Even if it makes us feel alone, makes us stand out, we can at least stand in the certainty that we followed our values.  And I’m excited to see if something does bite on it because there is something in me saying that this isn’t an opportunity I should miss. Sometimes all it takes is a feeling to open the door.  I’m grateful to follow it this time.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

The real luxuries in life: Waking without an alarm, nourishing meals, time for self and family, abundant gardens, no budget traveling.  These are the experiences of life.  This is life as it is, the things we can’t buy, the things we can’t replace.  Things change as we age and experience what life has to offer.  We learn the things that really matter.  Our circles get smaller. We simultaneously want less and more.  With time, understanding of what life is actually about and what it means takes hold and we learn that we need less things and more substance.  Things can be destroyed, taken, lost.  Substance permeates the mind, body, and soul. Substance is what life is.  Substance is exactly the luxury we are talking about: the ability to live in the moment and be fully present to life, the ability to live life on its own schedule and in its own rhythm.  Perhaps it’s just clarity that comes, but something shifts in our definition of what’s important.  It isn’t cliché to say that time is the most precious resource.  It is truly the only resource we have that once spent is truly gone. 

We have immense freedom to choose what we do with our time and so often it feels like we are waiting for things to happen and then all of a sudden we wake up and we are 40 with a home, kids, a job that we sort of kind of (hate) tolerate.  I hate to feel like that’s normal, that we can go through a large portion of our lives and then ask ourselves how the hell we got there, like we went through it like a zombie.  I know there are people out there who live every second and they have no regrets—or if they have regrets they at least appreciate the memory.  But there is this other side to it where people wake up and they feel like they haven’t lived at all and half of their time is gone.  For them, we need to unravel and unpeel how we got there, we need to look at where we are, what we are doing, where we want to go, and yes, we need to look at the lies we were told that swindled us into giving up the one thing we can’t get back.

Part of this process is realizing what we have and, not just appreciating it, but understanding it.  Understanding the meaning of luxury, of what is important, of what we actually need in this world.  The ability to shift into creative expression and abundance, the ability to feel peace, happiness, and security.  The ability to shut out what we heard for the last however many years and start to follow what we feel, what we know.  To trust our own knowing again.  There is an awakening in that moment, a coming alive that can only happen with death.  We are so much richer than we know.  All we have to do is let go of what we thought we knew, slow down, and wakeup to what we have.  Ironically it is in slowing down that time speeds up.  The window opens to all the time in the world when we realize we are infinitely here.  In one long moment.  Awaken from within and appreciate what we have, what we know in the depths of our souls.  Trust the instinct, the inner voice and do not be afraid to put down what we’ve previously believed would bring us satisfaction.  Indulge in the aliveness of being here and now and see there is an infinite now.  We just have to lay down the ultimate sacrifice: who we were has to die, and we have to awaken to who we ARE.     

“Maturity is healing and unlearning your own toxic patterns to turn your pain into power, your wounds into wisdom, the mistreatment of others into boundaries, and your generational curses into blessings,” Mind Tendencies 2. This ties into our discussion about future faking.  When we are honest with ourselves about the obstacles we put in our own way, we can then learn how to dissolve them.  That includes allowing people to misunderstand us, or delaying action in the moment thus delaying our lives hoping it will happen for us.  So many of us look at maturity as a certain level of seriousness or making sure we portray ourselves a certain way (image).  I used to look at maturity as respect for attaining a certain age, the ability to take charge and constantly making decisions, leading with authority. These things are part of maturity, but this isn’t what makes people mature. The truth is there are plenty of “adults” who don’t have a clue, making terrible decisions, and we think they are mature because they are a certain age.  Or there are people who seem completely flighty who are remarkably astute.  The difference is an inner knowing and how closely we follow it.  We grow when we let go of the things that hold us back, when we realize that we don’t need to seek comfort, we need to allow things to develop as they are meant to.  Basically, we do better when we understand our role in where we are—including the ways we have created our own problems.

There is also this misconception about maturity and responsibility.  The idea of responsibility is complex.  We can’t let ourselves be so bogged down with responsibility and obligation that we forget to live our purpose, but we need to take enough responsibility for our lives that we are accountable for the results.  None of these things make us mature.  People can set some pretty low bars for their goals and believe they have it together.  When we take responsibility for our own lives, we acknowledge where we lowered that bar, where we decided to kick the can like we talked about yesterday.  We see where we can do better.  We stop letting the outside influence us and we deal with what we feel in the moment.  We heal those issues in the moment and we make peace with who we are.  We learn to love who we are.  Most importantly, we accept who we are and allow that version of ourselves to break free.  Maturity has nothing to do with our image, it has to do with possessing and practicing grace for ourselves and others and knowing it has nothing to do with us.  It has to do with taking ownership, authority, and responsibility for ourselves. 

As we are healed, we create space because the junk falls away and is removed from our souls.  Maturity is letting go of the desire to put it back because we are familiar with it.  It’s knowing it’s bad for us and leaving it where it is.  It’s making the right choices for who we are, not for who we want to be seen as.  It’s accepting that not everyone can or will understand us, that others can go about their path as they see fit, and knowing we have the wisdom and fortitude in ourselves to get us where we are meant to go.  It’s listening to what feels right in us and trusting good guidance.  It’s keeping the humor because we know the outside has little influence on the inside.  When we are healed, we understand that we won’t have to focus on any of this, we will simply be it.  We will stop repeating patterns and do what is right for ourselves. The goal of maturity isn’t to appear a certain way or to be a certain way.  Maturity is about loving and honoring and accepting who we are without apology or fear or the need to go back wo what is familiar.  Maturity is the loving embrace of allowing the entirety of our being to flow and to allow the same for others, to encourage the same in others.  We don’t need more responsibility, we need more maturity. 

“Stop future faking,” Dr. Ramani.  Future faking is the act of promising something in the future for an action now and not following through on that promise.  The example of this is, “I will never do x again if you can help me with y now” or “If you stay, I will do this in x amount of time” and then it never happens.  Dr. Ramani uses this in the context of relationships, and how some people do this in order to keep others around.  I immediately saw how we do this to ourselves.  How often do we keep kicking the can or moving the goal post on a goal we have?  Like, I’m going to wake up early and start working out but then we feel exhausted and we sleep instead.  Now look, I know there are some people who go hard core and no matter what happens—anything at all—they will force themselves to go through with it.  There is 100% a time and place for that and there is value in it; if you stayed up late watching movies the night before, get your ass up, that’s your fault.  But I’m a realist:  There is also a time and place to stop pushing. If you’re sick, if you’re not seeing results and you need to pivot—there is no point in pushing forward because you will not get anywhere—you’ll end up doing circles or doing more damage and pushing yourself further back than if you had just taken the rest.

Yes, a lot of this comes down to accountability, but it also comes down to consistency and honoring who we are.  Beyond honoring, we must know ourselves well enough to call out when we are lying to ourselves and then do something about it.  When we aren’t being who we really are, a lot of things happen.  We start listening to what other people say about us and we start believing it, we lose authenticity because we aren’t adhering to what we know we need to do/the core of who we are, we lose hope because we aren’t seeing the results we want, we find it easier and less painful to try and convince ourselves to believe we can do something later.  But if we are honest with ourselves, we honor ourselves. When we do what we say we will and stick to our values and principles and those steps we have to take to follow through are crystal clear.  We see results when we take action toward it, not when we think about it or listen to other’s opinions on it.

Above all, as painful as the realization may be, we can’t allow ourselves to believe we have all the time in the world.  Now, this isn’t to be morbid and suggest we are all going to die tomorrow, but the truth is we do get a step closer to that end every day.  When things work in divine timing and we are in flow, there is a point where time ceases to exist and we simply are.  But when we kick the can, we are delaying the moment we dive in and learn to swim.  Over the last few days we’ve talked about discovery and not allowing others to drown us in their ideas of who we are and this is a key principle in that: all we have is now so there is no point wasting time trying to convince people of who we are or letting them tell us who we are.  We simply need to be who we are and seize the opportunities that cross our paths.  The universe is a funny thing and if we say we want something we need to have open arms to receive it.  We can’t dismiss it when it comes and hope that it comes around again.  Take accountability for our lives and make the decision to live in this moment, to respond to what we need now, to create now, to love now, to allow joy to flow through us now.  We don’t need to postpone our lives now in the hope that we can start living tomorrow.  What if we don’t have tomorrow?  Yes, the future will be there but sometimes we don’t know what it will be.  Sometimes it needs us to decide our present so we can see what we get tomorrow.

Do better.  I have a short piece today for a short phrase: do better. Those simple words came to me the other day in the middle of a pity-party/frustrating moment that nearly brought me into the same pattern I’ve felt for years: get upset and frustrated and allow ego to take over and never see the project through.  In truly wanting to feel better, we must do better.  There are things we simply have to go through or we have to decide to walk away from.  I started thinking about the application of the lessons I’ve learned and realized that things weren’t moving as I’d like them to because I wasn’t adhering to what I learned.  Having the knowledge is great and it’s a wonderful foundation, but if we don’t do anything with it, we never create the experience to truly immerse and understand it.  So I thought I would share a list of things that I want to focus on in order to do better in my life and in the lives of others.  I hope this helps!

More gratitude, more love and care.  More care for my heart, head, body, soul, family, home.  Less fear of losing, more work on loving.  Clearer focus, better priorities.  Follow through on commitments to others and to my own ideas.  Releasing the opinions of others.  Identifying better ways to work with my talents and better ways to share that energy with others.  More accountability, less blaming.  Intentional thought and energy toward the positive and creative ideas, less focus on what has happened before.  More focus on personal power instead of trying to control others.  More acceptance, less demanding.  More expansion and less contraction.  More doing the things that bring me joy, less repeating the same patterns every day. Progress, not perfection—just make sure intention and focus are there so we are headed in the right direction.  And simply, more of what feels good and less of what doesn’t.