“Did you think when you asked for expansion and a better life, that it was just going to be easy?  Did you think it would come without challenge?  Did you think that when you asked for more you weren’t going to be met with less to see if you still wanted to choose more? Did you think that when you asked for love you weren’t going to be me with opportunities to not be loving so you could choose love?  You asked for growth and so the universe is giving you opportunities for you to grow.  Did you think they would look easy? Tale as old as time babe, diamonds are made under pressure.  How you show up, how you react, how you respond in the moments when It is not easy to respond and not align in that heart opened, heart centered way, that’s when it matters.  You asked for expansion so you’re getting contraction so you can continue expanding.  Keep going,” Vanessa Fontana.  I want to caveat this with the fact that there is a difference between hard/challenging versus hard/not worth it because the truth is about mindset.  If we tell ourselves things are a struggle then it will be a struggle to get there and it will always be more effort than the return.  If we understand the challenge is about learning something then the effort is worth it.

Like every venture we undertake there will always be unknowns—there is no way to understand/predict every facet of what a certain goal entails because, even those with the same goals, have different paths and challenges to get there.  It’s naïve to think that everything will be effortless, even if it’s aligned with our authentic self/true purpose.  Even the good stuff takes work.  The key is knowing when the juice is worth the squeeze and whether the type of challenge presented is worth continuing to do more.  We are the only ones who can make that decision.  The truth is no one is owed anything, even the things meant for us.  At the very least we must put in the effort to align with our calling.  The other truth in this matter is the universe ALWAYS knows the truth.  Like, we can say we want to be a writer or a pod caster or say we want to help people but if we don’t do the work required to achieve those things, it will never happen and it will always feel like the odds are stacked against us. Also, we may be saying we want to be or do a certain thing but that isn’t what we really feel inside.  The universe will 100% throw challenges our way if we’re trying to do something that isn’t for us—even if we think we’re doing it for the right reasons like saying we want to take over the family business because we “should” so we go through the motions but we know deep down we want to be doing something else.  The universe will make it feel awful inside even if it looks like a smooth transition on the surface.

Even if you/we don’t believe we chose this assignment prior to arriving here on Earth, the fact is, once we are here, everything we choose is 100% our choice.  Sure there are things we are guided toward, things we are shaped for through our environment, but whatever we ultimately do with our time and our lives is our choice.  That doesn’t mean we are alone in figuring everything out but it does mean that we are responsible for altering the course when we feel something isn’t working or isn’t aligned.  It does mean that we have to accept the responsibility that comes with those choices and sometimes we have to clean up our own messes.  Creation isn’t always pretty and I’ve said it before—creation means the destruction of what we knew and the act of destruction is always messy.  We must be prepared to put the pieces back together into the new version, whatever it is.  That means we need to have a vision of what the new IS.  That takes the time to flip all those little broken pieces over and see what they are so we can form the new picture out of the puzzle.  And that’s the beautiful thing: the new is always present in the old.  We’re taking the pieces of ourselves that still matter in the creation of the new—we never really leave all of ourselves behind, just the parts that no longer serve.  So keep going even when we feel broken.  Rest, but keep digging through the ask to find what the new version is asking of us and soon, piece by piece, that new life is built and the transformation is complete.  That takes work.  But it’s the most beautiful work if we can stick with it.