“What if you experience a miracle and it all just works out? Stay open to that energy,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  We can’t make our delusions a reality if we aren’t open to the possibility of them working out.  For a delusion to become reality, we have to be open to some pretty crazy/interesting alternatives.  Doing anything new requires us to do something different, possibly things we haven’t done before.  It may feel awkward or even a bit scary, but as long as we are open to the idea that those steps, no matter how scary, will work out, then we are on the right path to things happening that will take us where we want to be.  Things get dark sometimes, that’s just the way life is in certain moments.  But it is often in those moments that life has a way of working out.  When we try to control everything, to make sure every little detail is how we think it should be, we restrict the flow of life.  I’ve talked about that many times before.  Sometimes we just have to take the leap and go for it, even if it doesn’t seem to make logical sense. 

I will be the first to admit that sometimes life hits us upside the head with a 2×4—it isn’t always pleasant and it takes us by surprise.  The thing we never want to experience happens, we lose what we thought we never would.  But we always come through on the other side.  Just because we look different than we imagined doesn’t mean that wasn’t how it was supposed to go. It still worked out.  Miracles look like many things.  For every time we get caught in traffic, that email doesn’t send, we don’t get the job, that person breaks up with us, a friendship turns sour, or we lose someone or something we love, we also manage to be right where we are meant to be with the exact people we need, doing whenever we need to.  I have a story that I will share in a few days about this—and when it happened, it hit me like a ton of bricks: sometimes the universe gives us NO CHOICE but to let go.  There is nothing to hold onto. And that’s what is supposed to happen.

I guess in some ways what I’m saying (even as a reminder to myself) is that everything ALWAYS works out.  No matter what has happened, we are still here, we have made it through.  No matter what it looks like now, we have made it through.  No matter what we lost, we made it through—and chances are we gained something in that loss as well.  No one ever said change was easy or painless or pretty.  No one said getting what we wanted was what “things working out” means.  We need to tweak our definition of miracle a little bit so we always keep perspective on what a miracle really is.  In its simplest definition, a miracle is a sudden or unexpected outcome turning in our favor.  Doesn’t mean it was pretty or how we thought it would be—it just means it turned out.  If that doesn’t work for you or you’re struggling to believe it, then try and get comfortable with the idea that whatever happened is exactly what was meant to happen.  The fact that all of these things aligned to bring us to this exact moment, to the moment when it all comes together is itself a miracle.  The fact we exist is a miracle.  The fact we exist means that it’s all working out and coming together as it was meant to anyway.  Be open to it all.

“May all of your delulu come trululu,” Dr. Claudia Thompson.  I wanted to share something short and sweet so we never forget that everything/anything we think can become true.  A little wish or hope for the world that we need to remember our magic and that we can make our magic a reality.  Our entire world exists in our heads, so what we think and how we feel matters.  And when we can align our dreams with our actions and if it feels right, then we can make anything happen.  It isn’t delusional just because we can’t see it yet—and if we never take the time to see if those “delusions” can become real, that is the only certain way that they never will be.  I want the world to have delusional faith and hope that what they want can become real.  I want their dreams, the things we think are an impossibility, to be brought into this reality.  I want everyone to remember their magic because those things are meant to be brought into this world.  Wishing you all a delusional, delightful reality.   

Every day we are guided to learn and grow.  Corey Talbott shared an image of a plant with a bud in the shape of a heart and the caption said “He’s in the small details.  If you move too swift, you will miss them” and it got me thinking about the small details in life.  Again, the magic of the universe and its timing played out as there was a reel that immediately followed discussing making intentional decisions.  In this instance the reel was talking about a business and how the choices we make in representation and how we treat our employees matters and will essentially infiltrate the entire business and how we run it—and how people perceive and receive it.  Like, if we have an idea, and we want something to thrive, we need to take the time to nourish it down to the littlest things.  Specifically, we take our mission/vision/values and apply it to everything we do.  We allow the little things to be the driving force so to speak.  So often we are told to not sweat the small stuff yet here are back to back reminders that the little things matter.

I think the context of the little things matters, speaking from experience, that if we spend too much time on the little things, we get stuck—and if we think EVERY little decision is going to have long term consequences, we will never move.  We have to learn to evaluate what we have in front of us and to use discernment for what has impact—the choices we need to pay attention to versus those we can decide and then move on.  We have to look at what matters and why.  We worry about our image and I think we need to remember that our image isn’t the determining factor in success.  Image is an illusion, it’s what we want people to see/think/feel about us.  Image is a manipulation.  When we work from the little details as a part of who we are and what we are trying to accomplish, it becomes about embracing our lives, who we are.  That authenticity can’t be faked.  That is felt.  In the spirit of growth, patience is key and we will nourish the little details. 

We can’t get so stuck on the big picture, the ultimate goal, that we miss the small things that give meaning to the whole thing, the little things that teach us what matters in the grand scheme.  We have choices every day, choices that tell us who we are, choices that change who we are.  As long as we are connected to who we are at our core, we will catch the little things and see them for the signs they are.  There’s a saying along the lines of not getting so caught up making a living that we forget to make a life, and I think that applies here as well because we can’t get so lost in the big picture that we miss the gifts we receive daily.  The small things give meaning.  And there is another saying that the days are long but the years are short—so we need to remember to be present because someday all the things we felt were the same are suddenly going to be very different and the time we thought we had will have shifted.  Be aligned, be in the moment, be appreciative and aware of what we have right in front of us.  Be intentional, purposeful, and alive.  Take time to enjoy the details that matter, the time to enjoy what we have now, relish in these moments, this long, infinite now.  Learn, grow, love, and live. 

“Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement,” Golda Meir.  The human soul knows what it needs on so many levels and it constantly feeds us signs and reminders through feelings and thoughts.  When we feel an excitement for something, when we feel strongly about something, we need to take the time to dive deeper into it—is this a temporary thing?  Is this a different type of calling?  Is this a sign of something more that has a bigger purpose?  The other day we spoke about how we don’t always feel ready and that we should take the chance anyway—that chance, that feeling often starts with these little flames, the sparks we feel.  The result comes with action, the fanning and encouragement of those flames. We learn through doing.  We are so worried about what we look like that we fear looking like a novice even when we are novices.  We can’t get to the end before we’ve walked the path.  Everyone has to begin at some point—we all start at step one.  So why do we want to look like we know what we do not know? Perhaps it is some old fear, some old worry about appearing vulnerable.  But we can never take the next step if we aren’t willing to admit what we need to learn.

So with the understanding that all we have is now and that the only way to experience growth is for us to follow through on those feelings of potential, then we must accept that we have to be willing to learn.  We have to be willing to be that novice so we can become the expert.  Learn the most we can and see where those little sparks can bring us.  Learn what we are meant to be.  No one begins an expert, knowing everything about anything, not even the things we are drawn to.  We have to learn and sometimes that means taking a path we wouldn’t think to take.  Often times what we think something appears to be is not what it actually is or the option in front of us seems far from what we think we need to do, but we have to do it even if it doesn’t feel quite right—like we aren’t quite ready.  We must allow the universe to surprise us and teach us, perhaps both, and become what we are meant to be. We learn in doing things we haven’t done before.  It’s when we learn that we can take on our responsibility. Sometimes we fear the fire that burns inside of us because we don’t want to be erased or we don’t want all we knew to disappear because the unknown is unfamiliar.  But sometimes we have to burn away the excess, the extraneous so we know what is real and what life is trying to bring us.  The spark can be intimidating/scary if we’ve been burned before—sometimes it does burn.  Other times we burn away what is no longer necessary and we reveal who we are.  Either way we learn, either way we become who we are meant to be.   

Today I am grateful for a new level of understanding.  I’ve carried guilt with me my entire life—guilt for making decisions for myself where someone gets hurt—all the while never considering that I was making allowances for people who didn’t consider me.  I’d find myself making plans, doing what I needed to do only to be told things like “Oh, I would have gone with you” with the undertone that I should feel guilty for leaving them out when they’ve left me out previously with no regard to my feelings.  The level of understanding is this: people choose when and where to include you, they show you what they think and feel about you with their actions, not their words.  Don’t let them manipulate and twist the reality based on what they say—you have to trust what you feel.  My direct lesson is that I am allowed to do what works for me and I don’t need to make space for people who don’t make space for me.  If I’m going to build the life that I want and love, I need to stop making space for those who want to be there when it’s convenient for them.  I am worth more than the time someone deigns to spend with me.  I am worth someone’s time, attention, affection, planning, and purpose.  And my dreams/desires/opinions are just as worth being heard as someone else’s.  For someone who has a lot to say, I’m awfully quiet in crowds.  I need to find my voice again—not let them keep me quiet. 

Today I am grateful for another trip around the sun.  I recently celebrated my 41^st birthday.  It wasn’t a big to-do or anything and that is ok.  When I turned 40, a switch flipped in me where my health became the priority.  I got myself back in line and I introduced new habits into my life, things that improved me greatly.  I learned about what I liked and what my capacity was, what I enjoyed, what I wanted to make space for, and I dug deeper into what I wanted my life to look like.  I understood it was no longer about what other people wanted and trying to find a way to fit myself in—it was about me taking the reins of my life and steering it where I wanted it to go.  When we celebrate life, it’s about the life we live, it’s about letting the potential out—celebrating is about living, doing what we need to.  So ringing in 41 meant something different.  This wasn’t a milestone year, I didn’t need a celebration—I needed to celebrate myself.  I needed to do the digging, do the work of what I wanted to do.  40 was the foundation, the turning point.  41 is the work.  41 is owning the plan, the life, the doing—and following through on it.  Set the goal, focus on it, do it–and I know I can follow that pattern because I did it to get my health back.  So I am grateful for another year and the years to come living the life I am meant to have.  It truly is a blessing.

Today I am grateful for unexpected turn arounds.  The world/universe really does surprise us when we least expect it.  I received an unexpected return of something I’d worked on a long time ago and it shifted my perspective on some things.  Sometimes the return on investment is greater than we anticipated.  I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunity to use what I had done previously to take care of some things I have in the present.  To understand that even if we are afraid of something we decide on now, the universe has ways to take care of us that we don’t always see or expect.  We all face moments in life where we are scared to take the leap, to make the choice because we don’t know how we will handle it in the future.  Fine it seems like a good idea now, but what happens when x,y,z happens and we aren’t able to sustain it like this?  But there are times we have to take that leap anyway and it turns out just fine.  I don’t know all the ways of the universe and I do struggle with trust at times—but there have been moments I’d be an idiot to say that the encouragement didn’t exist. I don’t understand the conflict between ideas at times—like if I know something is meant to happen, why do things get in the way?  But I know that at some point the answer will be clear.   

Today I am grateful for a boundary.  Something clicked in me the other night where a repeated pattern reared its ugly head—a pattern that I’ve tried to break for the last 24 years.  One that comes back every time a specific series of events happens.  Like, I trust someone, they push the boundary a little bit, I give them another chance, and they push the boundary again—and then it happens a third time and I get really angry—and then they act like they are somehow the victim or like I’ve been crazy.  It hit me that I truly didn’t care that this pattern made me look a certain way—I finally understood that if this is something that has bothered me for this long, then it is the other person who needs to stop engaging in that behavior or I need to stand firm in my boundaries—or maybe it’s both.  When people care about each other, they don’t do things to hurt someone else, especially someone they care about.  They respect us enough to know that certain things are a boundary and that they shouldn’t engage in that behavior.  So my boundary is you don’t get to say one thing and do another.  That isn’t how it works.  We work together, we respect each other, we build together—or frankly, we have nothing at all.  This is the year to turn it around—and I have no exceptions for that. 

Today I am grateful for encouragement.  Sometimes we all need a little reminder that we can do it.  That we can believe in ourselves and accomplish what we want to do.  Sometimes we need the reminder that making the right decision can be tough—and just because it’s tough doesn’t mean it isn’t right.  We are only here once on this wild ride so it’s time to find the cheerleaders—and if we don’t have them, we need to be that cheerleader for ourselves.  I’m not talking about needing constant reassurance on something—I’m talking about having the confidence to find the rooms that support us and walking away from the rooms that don’t.  Find the spaces that fill us up instead of constantly relying on us to fill them. 

Wishing everyone wonderful week ahead.

“No matter what, you are ready.  It might not seem like the right time, but it never will be.  If you have thought about creating, starting, trying, or launching—do it! You will learn in the simple act of just starting” unknown—uncredited on my calendar.  This was followed by a reel on source junkie that said “It’s already yours.”  Funny how the universe aligns to remind us of what we are meant to do.  We just need to remember who we are and take the chance to let the greatest version of ourselves free.  That’s all the world is waiting for.  We so often don’t regret the chances we take, we regret the chances we don’t take.  What we want is within reach as long as we allow it to be and follow through on the details to get there.  I’ve said it a million times before that we know what we need to do—truly.  We feel it in our guts and we spend more time convincing ourselves not to do it because we are afraid of something.  Afraid of what we will lose, that we will get in trouble, that people will think something/a certain way about us. 

We need to start looking at what we will gain if we take the chance and what we will lose if we DON’T.  Start looking at the good we can unlock by trying something different—especially if it aligns with who we are—understand that through honest expression we can’t be wrong. And people will think something anyway—no matter what we do they will have an opinion one way or another.  Like I said yesterday, we will always be the villain in someone’s story and we could spend a lifetime trying to shape other people’s perceptions of us or we can simply live our lives as we are meant to.  I’m not saying it’s easy to let go of what we know or that accepting the consequences of our actions isn’t scary or even that it doesn’t hurt to find out what people really think.  All of that is true.  But it’s also true that none of it matters.  We are responsible for our lives and our choices and we can’t let our best guesses of what people think determine our actions.  There is no other time beyond right now. 

We could spend an entire life doing what we are told, all the while knowing there is something else we are supposed to do, knowing that there is something greater we are meant to fulfill.  The energy we spend convincing ourselves to do otherwise is astounding compared to what it would take to actually follow through on what we wanted to do or the energy that would be created from following the momentum of such a dream.  The greatest asset and detriment to our success in this world is our use of the word “no.”  It’s an asset in setting boundaries—saying no to what doesn’t work for us allows us to say yes to what does; and it’s a detriment when we say no to what we know we need to do in favor of anything else.  Life throws us enough things that we can’t say no to—loss/natural disasters, death (our own included), those curveballs we couldn’t plan for.  So for all of those events we have no control over, why wouldn’t we say yes to what we do have a say in?  Why wouldn’t we go for it?  There will never be any other time than now.  Do it.   

We create many identities for ourselves.  We will be many different things in our lives—and we will be a different character at different times.  We will have to take up the role at certain times.  Right now, I’m in a villain-esque role with someone.  I’m not getting support from the higher ups in spite of being in the right.  And at this time, it’s becoming ever more clear that I will be named the villain no matter what I do, no matter what evidence I produce. I’m frustrated and aggravated and concerned that the implications at this point could have long term effects for me, but this is something I clearly have no control over. The fact will remain that someone’s perception will win out over the facts.  And that’s fine.  We are all the villain in someone’s story at some point.  We aren’t perceived the same way by every person we encounter.  But I don’t need to tolerate it—especially if it ISN’T true.  None of us need to tolerate it.  We can’t control how people perceive us or what they believe—and right or wrong the fact is they may believe we are the bad person.  We are still responsible for our own narrative and we are able to leave those circumstances. 

We do that by stopping the game.  We stop playing the game.  If it was never winnable in the first place, what is the point of even trying?  It’s ok to let go of a lost cause.  When people have their mind set on a specific definition of who we are, the sooner we realize it, the easier it is to adapt and move on.  The hardest part to swallow/accept is that it’s ok to be the villain in someone’s story.  We know our truth, we know THE truth of what happened and that’s all that matters.  We can literally experience the exact same thing and come away with to entirely different experiences.  The same is true for how we are perceived.  It’s our friends, the cat and the canary again.  Sometimes we are the cat and others we are the canary—and in either circumstance someone will favor the cat and someone will favor the canary.  We all have the capacity to be a monster to someone because, to the canary the cat is a monster. And we have no control over that definition.  Trying to be everything to everyone, trying to control how we are received and perceived is a complete waste of time and an impossible task.  So stop playing the game.

I used to think that if I couldn’t get my way, if someone didn’t see me in the light I wanted to be perceived in, then I was wasting my time.  I’ve learned that it’s only a waste of time if we don’t learn from it.  If we continue to force the point/issue after it’s over.  And the reality is, if our authentic self-expression is a threat to someone, that’s their problem.  That has nothing to do with us.  Why would we want to waste our time convincing people who we are when they’ve already made up their minds and defined us according to their story?  We have to learn to let it go.  Don’t let ego force us to try and make ourselves to appear a certain way. We will feel better the more we stay in our authentic selves and allow ourselves to shine through no matter what.  We can’t change someone’s definition of who we are, we can only be what is right, what we know in our hearts. 

One thing I want to emphasize for all of us is that we need to celebrate life.  There are so many wonders and gifts in this world, so many things we can do, so many things we can see, learn, feel, experience, create…we are part of this magnificent living hallucination and we can alter it at any time.  I have spent the last year altering my own hallucination, experiencing all the wonders and joys of finding out what really matters in this world, finding out what I really want in this world, finding out what I could do to make it happen, what I am capable of when I’m honest with myself about who I am.  The simplest conclusion I can come to is this: LIFE is what really matters, more importantly, ALIGNED, AUTHENTIC life.  We are powerful beings, living, loving, creating, thinking beings.  We have ideas of what this life is like, the reasons for us being here but the truth is we don’t have a freaking clue to any of it—we do not know those answers.  We are here on the same cosmic ride as anyone else.  No one knows what’s next, what’s after this existence.  No matter what we make for ourselves or of ourselves while we are here, we all end up going to the next step, the “on” all by ourselves, and we don’t know what that looks like.  So, while we are here, we need to make the most of it.  Live every moment we have fully, completely, totally in love with life and dive into experiencing all the joys and creative possibilities we are afforded while we are here.  Love, live, and give as much as we can.

Over the last year, I’ve made this a real focus.  When we are young, this type of behavior comes from a different space—while we are still learning who we are, it tends to revolve around pure desire, want, and a need for immediate gratification–impulse.  We live in a society fixated on immediate gratification for everything.  I’m 100% guilty of that as well, feeling the impatience when things don’t come when I expect them to or in the way I expect them to.  But over the last year I found myself in positions where immediate gratification wasn’t a possibility—if I’m honest, a lot of my life reinforced that things come when they want to, not when I want them to, but 2024 was a bit different.  I spent a tremendous amount of time in limbo, worrying, wondering about what would come next—again, not like I wasn’t familiar with that from before, but this last year brought with it a certain amount of gravitas and realization that we only live once—and that we need to use that time to live.  Limbo looks different when you are dealing with the reality of mortality, your own and those you love.  It looks different when you don’t know if the entire life you built is about to implode.  It looks different when the people you thought had your back suddenly dip out and it isn’t so clear what’s going on/where you stand with them anymore.  It looks different when the people you weren’t so sure about turn out to have your back more than those who said they always would.    

For me, 2024 shifted the dynamic from waiting for things to happen to putting myself firmly in the driver’s seat.  There was no more room for victimhood or martyrdom or any of the old patterns—it was time to get behind the wheel.  This is something that happens to everyone and it is sobering.  Understanding the choices I’ve made and witnessing the consequences of those choices in others allowed me to choose another path (when appropriate).  We can continue to choose the same things, waiting for something different to happen, we can choose to wish for things and wait to see what happens—or we can choose to try something different and take action toward what makes sense, what is right for us.  Shifting that perspective over the last year allowed me to take my health back, to take control back over my decisions rather than base them on what someone else thinks, and to put the idea into practice that if someone is going to treat me like an option, I can remove myself from the equation so I’m no longer a choice.  This past year also sent me on a journey of learning to trust, learning to find faith, learning to hear and follow my intuition again.  I have felt a dramatic shift in my energy and, as certain options were removed from my life, the path became clearer. 

A year can change a lot.  When it came to goals, I always thought a year was too long and I didn’t want to wait.  I was hoping for that instant gratification we’ve become so accustomed to.  Sometimes pieces need to fall into place and we can’t rush that.  Our life isn’t Amazon where we place an order for the perfect existence and we are transported to it.  Life is bumpy, messy, filled with loss at times—and we have to get lost.  In spite of all of that, those twists and turns and losing those we love, taking up the mantle of caregiver, the role of creator in our lives, putting ourselves as the responsible party for what comes and taking care of those we love, make us who we are.  Deciding our own worth, deciding what we are and aren’t willing to wait for, what we will and will not accept in our lives reinforces what life is: a giant playground waiting for us to fill in the blanks.  The fact that we are alive is worthy of celebration.  The fact that we can feel, think, do anything is worthy of celebration.  My plans don’t always pan out, but I know THE plan will.  Experiencing loss and change gives us the opportunity to appreciate life again, to choose again.  When I look at where I was last year at this time, I see a scared girl with a dawning realization that no one could make the choices she needed to make to get to where she wanted to go and that her current choices weren’t going to get her there.  She knew she needed to change and she was scared to do it because it meant losing who she knew herself to be.  I see that girl choosing to go for it, deciding she wasn’t going to wait for someone to tell her what the next move was, she wasn’t going to ask permission any longer and she wasn’t going to stay where she wasn’t valued anymore.  That girl accepted her worth and made moves to make sure the world knew the woman she is.  And now they do.  That birthday changed EVERYTHING for me.  I was born and may have been alive before that, but I came alive on that birthday.  Here’s to another year.

It is a fact that mind and body are connected in every way.  The body knows what the mind feels even before we consciously allow it to be known/felt, before we can assign meaning to it to understand.  We know when we are doing what is right for ourselves, for our minds, for our bodies and we know when we need to do better.  What we know will express through the body even if we don’t allow it to be consciously said.  With that logic, the anxiety we feel often stems from underlying patterns we know don’t serve us that we continue anyway, going against what we know is right for us.  We need to claim responsibility for our lives and reducing anxiety.  I’ve fought anxiety for the great majority of my life and I never wanted to admit my role in it.  It felt like something that just settled on me that I needed to carry.  There are certain facets of it from a chemical stand point that we don’t have control over, but we do have control over mitigating how the body handles these things and our reaction to it. 

Anxiety is sometimes our mind/body on alert for what we innately know and perhaps don’t want to admit.  It’s the expression of the body’s innate system and intuitive connection—an intricate, subconscious knowing.  Do I pretend that this is the ultimate answer and the cause of all anxiety?  Absolutely not.  But do I believe in the validity of self-fulfilling prophecy and the mind’s ability to ignore the reality of what we do?  Absolutely.  Bishoi Khella shared an amazing reel about his initial steps into health and wellness, talking about the day he smoked back to back cigarettes and chugged coffee and he physically felt like he was having a heart attack.  He was already in an unhealthy state with bad habits and had feared something like his health taking a turn in that direction.  So why did he keep doing the things he knew put him at risk for that very thing happening?   He proposed the idea that when we know deep down what we are doing is wrong, the body can manifest it—or something like it.  Like, being sedentary and eating poorly and we start fearing a heart attack and then we smoke those back to back cigarettes and drink the coffee and suddenly we feel like we are having a heart attack. 

While we don’t often look at those scenarios as manifesting, that is, in essence, what’s happening.  No, manifesting isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and flower crowns, worshipping the moon.  The mind is powerful enough to conjure up some of that negative stuff too.  So yes, it is very likely that we can bring our worst fears to fruition…even if it’s the image or shadow of those fears and we create anxiety around it…so our anxiety feels like a heart attack when we do the things we fear will cause a heart attack.  It’s like we know we’re unhealthy and that those habits would be the end of us so we have some sort of physical manifestation of what we fear.  The idea instantly made sense to me.  My journey dealing with anxiety wasn’t so straightforward as connecting those pieces and I’m still learning about it daily.  But something became very clear with this concept from Bish: We end anxiety when we take steps to get our lives back—when we live.  Basically, taking action in the right direction eases anxiety because we are empowering ourselves to find a solution.  While we may know that on a subconscious level, this is the most visceral way I can explain it because we feel the ease of that chokehold when we do what we need to do.  So take our lives back one step at a time and start listening to what we already know. Going against that intuition is like playing Russian roulette each time we do the very thing we know will cause us harm—it may not get us every time but it will eventually so the body warns us.  We create these scenarios and we can resolve them just as easily by admitting what the body already knows.    

“If you stay in environments where people don’t recognize the value of you, you will shrink your gift to the size of what they can stand.  And that is what causes anxiety and depression and stress.  Because you have had to shrink into a form where people can tolerate you.  I refuse to be small because you think small.  I am not shrinking my vision because you can’t catch up.  You better roll with it or get rolled over,”  unknown (it came from a reel that showed up on my feed with an uncredited speaker).  I think every person on this planet knows what it means to not feel valued.  Not every person on this planet is raised to see their inherent worth, and if we don’t know our worth, we will never push ourselves to what we know we are capable of.  We become familiar with our surroundings, looking out thinking that something else would be nice but that it isn’t for us.  So we stay exactly where we are, and we create a sense of comfort in that familiarity even if it isn’t good for us, and before long, we are stuck where we are at.  We create a life that soothes over the ache of not having what we are meant to have.  We stay that way until we realize we have a choice in the mater and WE are the ones who define our worth.  It takes time, but we realize that if we see the value in our ideas, that’s enough. 

Human nature, for whatever reason, seems to dictate that we exert control over each other.  That we find value in other people through what they can give us or from the power they already have, from the things they’ve acquired or from the show they put on for us.  That then translates to our worth coming from the same thing—what we give others, what we acquire.  Until we are able to see beyond that, we tend to stay where we are with those self-soothing mechanisms I mentioned above.  If we stay long enough, we convince ourselves that our dreams were always small and insignificant anyway.  When we don’t give ourselves the chance to explore our ideas it’s easy to chalk them up to daydreaming or nonsense.  The truth is some of the greatest successes in this world came from a daydream, a feeling about a daydream, the thought that an idea someone had might be cool or there was potential in it.  I’m talking everything from the light bulb, to air conditioning, to the car, to Amazon.  If any one of those people had brushed off their idea as nonsense or insignificant, if any one of them had listened to someone tell them it would never work, where would we be now?  We live in the world we do with what we have because people told someone else to fuck off when they had an idea they knew/felt was right—even if that someone else was their own mind.

There comes a day when the voice we try to shut out simply won’t shut up.  If we are in an environment where we are merely tolerated and not celebrated, then we need to understand our own value and that our worth won’t be seen by others until we see it in ourselves.  We set our own value and it is up to us to maintain the boundaries around that value.  We don’t need to demand anything of anyone else, but if someone doesn’t match our energy or at the very least support it, then we know it’s time to move on and move away.  Once we see our worth, then we understand others will see it where we are meant to shine.  We are worth more than being tolerated.  Life is worth more than being tolerated or numbed away.  I have always believed every person has the capacity to be great and that we all just get a little stuck with distraction sometimes.  We believe what we are taught and what we experience and sometimes those things are limiting.  But if we are able to push beyond that the possibilities are endless.  I don’t claim any of that is easy, but standing up and claiming our space and ideas is far easier than shrinking into something that isn’t us.  I would rather risk standing up and falling than continue to chip away at a dream I’m meant to nurture and see through.  Don’t waste time or accept a lesser version of ourselves for the sake of another person.  Believe with everything, believe big.  Raise the bar for what WE tolerate in our own lives and take our seat at the head of the table rather than settle in the middle, hoping for a chance.  Take the shot.