“You can spend 100 years in a garage and that don’t make you a car,” Tabitha Brown.  A good follow up to our conversation yesterday as it goes more in depth in regards to both alignment and action.  As we spoke about affirmations and their ability to lay the foundation of who we are, it’s important to remember that those affirmations also need to align with who we are inherently—not who we think we need to be, but what is already naturally inside of us.  We can’t simply say we are something we are not already embodying or feeling to some degree.  We need to do things in line with who we are.  Tabitha Brown trends toward a more spiritual/religious approach and that is definitely one area that I struggle with.  I feel like I need to control everything, that I always need to be vigilant and do my part. But hearing Tabitha speak, I understood that relationship with a higher power a bit differently: Our relationship with source is personal and it requires honesty.  Universal energy doesn’t lie, and if we do things not in line with who we are, we will never feel right.  If we say one thing and do another, that energy can’t coalesce into anything.

I’m not prepared to have a theological conversation on this platform, that isn’t my goal, but I still want to have a discussion about faith.  You don’t need to subscribe to a religion in order to have faith, but you do need to have trust.  I’ve struggled with trust my entire life so I admittedly still struggle to trust that things will happen—which is why I control as mentioned above.  I have never been taught to rest in assurance that things will unfold for me—I have no problem believing that for others and I’ve witnessed it.  But for some reason, it doesn’t translate to me.  I don’t know if it stems from loss early on or from disappointment in my relationships with others, varying degrees of people I was supposed to trust not following through, of always having to be the strong one and forgive early on.  I learned if I wanted something to happen, I needed to make it happen.  Not that I lacked the things I needed, but I didn’t know the extra was available to me—I settled for the basics and anything extra was a gift.

The point is this: we can say we are something but if we don’t align with it and act from that space, the universe doesn’t know what to provide.  It requires a degree of faith to rest assured in who you are and to believe that your purpose will unfold as long as you stay to your path.  I will stand by everything I’ve written and shared with you over these years in spite of, and perhaps because of my own fears—I truly believe it is possible to achieve whatever goal you set your mind to.  It just requires action from that place, from that state of being.  That requires trust to take the first step even if you can’t see the entire road before you.  Sometimes you have to simply settle where you are and allow the pieces to fall into place.  We don’t have to be in a constant state of doing, we just need to find ways to do more of the things in line with who we are.  Fear is chaos and good can’t settle in chaos.  Sometimes we need to let the good envelop chaos like a blanket in order to calm the storm.  We have to trust that there is good in all that happens and we need to trust that it all happens for a reason.  That assurance is the blanket and we need to wear it and move from that place of knowing. 

“You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having an undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are.  Outwork your self-doubt,” Alex Hormazi.  No disrespect to the author of this quote, but I don’t think it’s entirely true—it is evocative, so here we are discussing it, but I don’t think it’s entirely true.  External focus and achievement are one step short of validation seeking if you’re not focused on the right thing.  Checking off a list of achievements becomes meaningless in the end.  We gain our focus by creating a foundation in WHO WE ARE, so we know what our pursuits are and what purpose we have.  That comes from doing deep self-work and creating unshakeable belief in who we are, in affirming the choice of the identity that fits us, and in choosing ourselves repeatedly.  Yes, showing ourselves that we CAN do it, that we have the ability is a component of that.

Now, I agree with the point talk alone won’t get you where you want to go.  You need to put action behind words.  The more actions we take toward our goals and dreams, no matter how small, the more confident we become in taking bigger steps toward those goals and dreams.  THAT is absolutely a fact.  I like the idea of creating a discipline based on who we are because that feels better than saying we have to achieve all of these things in order to be deemed successful.  We decide who we are and then we go BE who we are.  It isn’t about fulfilling some checklist we are given that was the image of success decades ago.  The world is shifting because that system didn’t work for everyone.  Now we are seeing that we have to find who we are and figure out what we bring to the table.  It’s no longer about projecting an image, it’s about living the lifestyle that works for us. 

I think affirmations help us on the way to creating that foundation because they get us comfortable with that internal conversation of, “I am.”  It creates certainty around identity and an environment to learn about the fluidity of that identity and equally the solidity of that identity.  What works for us can and will change over time.  We evolve, we learn, and we grow into these versions of ourselves that have been trying to surface for ages.  The proof doesn’t need to be about proving anything to anyone else—confidence is internal and that means proving to ourselves.  Saying and doing are two different things but we have to say who we are before we can be who we are—so they build on each other. Find who we are and allow that person to come through. 

“Kill the urge to be chosen.  Choose yourself. This is the beginning of loving yourself—welcome home,” Soleoado.  This is part of the process of letting things fall apart, of finding the pieces of ourselves that need to be recognized.  Couples fight and my husband and I had a doozy over this past week—it was different than before.  We didn’t yell, we talked a lot and understood that we are in different places.  Neither one of us knew what to do next but we both understood that we were each other’s problem in the respect that we are fundamentally viewing life differently, we have different goals.  This can be one of those things that needs to fall apart in order to find who we are.  It didn’t hurt to hear that we are going in two directions, it hurt that 1. We weren’t taking the time to figure out how to honor each other’s needs/cooperate with each other to make them happen and 2. That we weren’t making a clear decision to end things if we didn’t want to support the other.

I realized I was waiting for his validation to approve of what I wanted and I was stubbornly invalidating what he wanted.  Ironically, it isn’t that I don’t want what he wants, it’s the way we are going about it that I struggle with—we are undercutting our own goals and I no longer want to cry victim, I want to actively go after what we want.  I couldn’t communicate that clearly.  For most of our relationship, I’ve cleaned up any mess thrown my way.  Financial, clutter, deep cleaning, laundry, emotional, legal trouble.  I’ve maintained the day to day responsibilities.  Paying the mortgage, buying groceries, doctor’s appointments, vet appointments, getting everyone ready in the morning.  I’ve maintained the social obligations like birthdays, showers, weddings, parties, family gatherings.  It has become too much to maintain on my own and I told him so.  I no longer wanted the validation of being a good wife, I just want my sanity back.  I want my time back so I can go after what I want to instead of waking up at 3am to squeeze in some me time.  I did all that because I wanted him to choose me, to know that I’m a catch.  Some of it was fun, yes, but the truth is, I wanted recognition and validation from him that I was good.

I knew during this argument/fight/coming to reality that I was going to have to choose myself even more—I also knew that he was going to have to do the same thing.  I don’t want him miserable and agreeing to a life he doesn’t want anymore than I want to do that.  I would have to decide to let go of the need for that validation and go after what I wanted.  That also meant KNOWING firmly and clearly what I wanted.  I know that I want to live my life differently than what I’m doing now.  As much as I have improved, there is more to do and more to step up and into. I don’t know what the future holds but I know that I will be with me until my last day so I have to do what works for me over what I think others want.  People are adaptable and there comes a point where they will either shift with or away.  Loving ourselves enough to honor who we are and go for the lives we are meant to have is a huge commitment.  But it’s better than being miserable and hoping for the life of our dreams to fall in our laps.  And even if the person we chose doesn’t choose us back, it may not be US, it’s a matter of them honoring who they are as well.  Reasons, seasons, and lifetimes—let it happen.

“Sometimes you have to fall apart to find pieces of yourself you didn’t know were there,” Soleoado.  Deciding to follow our own paths can be lonely at times.  Sometimes it feels like everything we know is being taken away from us.  Sometimes we simply have to let it fall away to let the light shine through.  The vulnerability of letting ourselves be seen in that state, where our honest goals and desires are shared with the world is unlike other forms of vulnerability.  It feels like the light is shined on every facet we’ve kept hidden—it feels naked and exposed.  But we can’t see those parts of us if we don’t take a light to them.  Sometimes the path we thought was solidly under our feet crumbles like sand and we have to rebuild.  In that rebuilding we are given the opportunity to create who we are and align that person with the facets we’ve previously hidden.

This is a natural part of growth.  The snake sheds its skin, the plant sometimes loses leaves, we lose our baby teeth, everything expands.  That is the nature of life and we no longer fit in the previously chosen/assigned definitions of who we are.  Things have to break down to grow.  I wrote a piece a while back about breaking down to break through.  It isn’t so much about ourselves shattering.  It’s about the ideas of who we are that we have to break.  In the same breath, there are facets of ourselves that need to be sharpened and honed because they are hidden inside.  Let it break.  I’ve made the mistake of treating my life like a series of endless spinning plates.  As if everything I take on needs to be maintained forever.  It’s exhausting and the body/mind knows when it’s time to let the plates fall.  I don’t want to fight that anymore. 

As scary as it is to let things go, to let them fall apart, there is a feeling of relief in dropping the things that were never ours to carry in the first place.  Emptying our cup of the negativity and filling it with the essence of who we are is the greatest act of self love.  Our cup doesn’t shatter, it just needed to empty to clear out what wasn’t meant for us.  We get to choose what liquid comes back in.  We get to choose what you bring out.  Falling apart allows things to fall together and gives a new perspective.  Maybe we needed to get closer to the real us and maybe that version couldn’t exist in the current circumstance.  Be grateful for the opportunity that comes from laying the puzzle out differently.

Rob Dyrdek shared a fascinating look at discipline on his podcast.  He talks about watching Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady and thinking their level of discipline was too extreme but changing perspective once understanding how everything in our existence matters—from what we choose to eat, how we spend our time, understanding the compound effect of our actions.  Those of us with wandering minds can find discipline challenging because we aren’t focused on one goal at a time.  I know my mind spins constantly so finding any consistency requires an intense focus.  What I’ve learned though is that much of what we think we have to do is really just extraneous noise.  If we learn to eliminate the clutter and distraction, discipline gets much easier. 

We talk a lot about creating the lives we want and that means getting clear on ourselves and who we want to be, our goals, and how we want to feel and then it means acting on those things that get us there.  Stepping away from the expected path and creating something that works for us, something sustainable, something authentic requires an extraordinary amount of discipline.  Sometimes those choices aren’t easy because the old ways are just beneath the surface, waiting for us, letting us off the hook.  So, yes, watching the greats, whether it is the great athletes, the great writers, the great minds, the great artists, it’s important to understand they know their path and they stick with it.  It isn’t a chore when it comes to something that needs to be shared and expressed to the world—it is a gift.  The joy of expressing self, of being seen and the value of it is never really pressed upon is.  Being seen by those who understand us is what helps create fulfillment of our purpose. It isn’t egotistical or selfish, it’s purposeful.

In my experience, I felt discipline meant living in a cage.  I wanted freedom to do what I want, I hated hearing people tell me what to do, I even wanted to prove that their rules or the things they focused on didn’t make sense.  I ended up spending a lot of time running around the mountain telling people they were doing it wrong instead of learning how to learn the lesson and move on, to create my own path.  Ironically as soon as I felt lost, I would BEG for the universe to show me the way, to tell me exactly what to do.  Discipline is what keeps us from scattering energy uselessly—in my case from starting a million projects and leaving them unfinished.  Discipline isn’t the act of caging anything, it’s the act of responding to a calling and holding our values accordingly.  It only becomes a cage when we listen to others over ourselves, waiting to hear our own voices. 

Forging our paths isn’t always easy.  It’s dirty, messy, challenging, and even scary at times but it’s worth the effort and the dedication to your authenticity to keep going.  There are no short cuts and the hard truth is that there really isn’t anyone or anything standing between you and your goals except ourself.  Once we learn to get out of our own way, put down the fear, put down the story we’ve told ourselves about who we are and what we need to do, put down the habit of seeking comfort over our dreams—that’s where the magic is.  It isn’t extreme to spend our time taking action toward our goals—it’s a necessary facet to exert the dedication and discipline to see our dreams through.  No one else will do it.  We make it happen and we will only get so far as our dedication to our dreams accompanied with consistent action takes us.  It’s in all of us to make it happen.  Choose our dreams, we only get one life.  

“I hope you fall in love with being alive,” Soleoado.  This is a simple yet incredibly complex one.  It’s easy to create opinions about our lives when we live in a state of comparison—which we do simply because we are told that’s how it is.  That’s how we know who has dominance over the other, who is worthy of making a decision, who should lead the pack.  We devalue our own ability to make decisions and guide our lives if the things we feel don’t align with what we are told the pre-packaged image of success looks like.  Insanity is buying into a system that immediately shackles you with the weight of debt, obligation, and competition for a false prize—a prize that, if we are honest, doesn’t even exist anymore.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, yet here we are, repeating the actions of a system that has long since proven out of date (and even dangerous/detrimental to people), hoping we will find fulfillment. We walk around with our internal cups empty hoping a full Starbucks will do the trick (not to knock Starbucks if coffee brings you joy—but you get the point.)

Now.  The simplicity of this is incredible: learn to love your life.  Learn to fill your life with the things you love.  Learn to create the experiences that bring you joy.  Learn to accept what you’re feeling and follow it without shame, without hesitation, without concern for what it means to other people’s happiness.  The truth they never tell us is that the well of joy, happiness, abundance, and experience is infinite.  There is no limit to what can make us happy, we just have to listen to our heart and souls over the external voices telling us what constitutes success, joy, or happiness.  Our internal systems are pretty damn smart but we learn to silence them to sustain the masses and end up miserable.  We listen to every voice but our own thinking they will give us the answers we already know.

The truth is you don’t hate your life, you hate living a life that isn’t for you.  You hate living a prescribed life outside of what works for you.  You hate forcing your square peg into the round hole, complaining the edges hurt while you cut away the parts of you that make you who you are.  When we add more of what gives us joy, we feel different.  We learn to fill our own cups and suddenly we see that well—the reason it was infinite is because there is a well in each of us and we are meant to fill it every day, fill it so much that it spills over into the world.  We aren’t meant to drain ourselves for the sake of others, we aren’t in competition, we are meant to complement each other.  No, that doesn’t mean complete each other, we very much need to have our whole picture in tact so we can bring all of us to the table.  We are meant to work with each other, keep the table round so we can bring the full scope of us, and make a bigger picture, one that fits us as we are.

The first step to this is to create a life you love.  Let go of the anger and the pain—and the act of letting go in itself can be painful, scary even.  I’ve identified with anger for far too long, so that means telling myself a different story.  If we learn to lean into our internal guidance we hear the voice letting us know the way and the story we are meant to tell unfolds.  There is no real secret to this, it’s simply a matter of trusting yourself enough to decide to let go of what you thought you needed, what you were told you needed, and stepping into what you KNOW you need.  Time is too short to waste it on a life you don’t love.  Time is the best resource we have and it is ours to do with as we please.  There is no rule that says we have to work, function, or buy into a certain way of being-we created that rule.  If it doesn’t make you happy then walk away.  Focus on filling that well with joy and you will see a life filled with joy instead of asking for permission to feel good on your days off.  Fall in love with life.  Love being alive and love sharing your life with others.  See the gift of this existence and share it with the world.

There is a lot on my mind tonight so I’m keeping this very short.  You never know the cards life is going to deal you, the curve balls, or even the moments you expect that come at a different time you were expecting.  I am grateful for my life in spite of the facets I am trying to change.  The change isn’t coming from a negative place—it’s coming from a place where I want more for myself and my family.  I am grateful to do the work to get to the next level.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still exhausted and saddened by the challenges—I’m human—or if I said it all makes sense—because I still can’t make heads or tails of the last few weeks.  But I am grateful to have the opportunity to figure it out.  A new season is coming, a new awakening and there are people, things, experiences, behaviors, patterns, and even parts of your life you love that simply can’t come with to the next phase.  That is where I’m at now and reconciling that truth is painful.  But I am grateful because I am not at the end even if I’m at the end of this phase.  I am not out of options even if this option hasn’t panned out.  I am human and having emotions and I am feeling the full spectrum: gratitude for the support and sadness at the changes, excited to have a new agreement and terrified to maintain the new, strong enough to move forward and concerned for my old patterns resurfacing.  I am grateful for another day.  For another chance.  For time spent with my family and my friends.  For love and for life.  This is the season we are in, and it is ok to be here.  Be grateful and keep going.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

It’s so hard to hear what we need when we are cluttered either mentally or physically by the ideas of what we are supposed to be.  the thing that brings us joy isn’t that far beneath the surface but we continually push it down in favor of the responsible or right decision.  WE are incredibly mean to ourselves.  We restrict and deny and we punish and we inhibit what we are meant to do under the pretense of being someone else’s idea of success, in order to be accepted in a society, to feel part of the crowd.  There are times being part of the group is far lonelier than being alone.  It can be frustrating too when the group doesn’t hear what you’re saying, or if you’re made to feel unheard.  We are taught to relish and enjoy our “silliness” and the play of childhood up until we are about 5 or 6 and then it becomes the serious business of life and making ourselves mean something.

As adults we spend a gross majority of our time undoing what was done, trying to figure out what comes next, what we are meant to do, and time healing.  Some take longer than others to get on the healing path because we don’t know we are broken, we simply don’t know how to do the work.  And healing brings up demons that we often aren’t ready to face.  If we start simply, start with listening to that voice inside of us, we hear what we need.  Our minds, our souls, and our bodies are incredibly intuitive.  They all know what we need and they tell us—it’s our job to hear those messages.  Doing inner child work and learning to hear that voice again is a beautiful exercise in validating who we are when we spent a good portion of our lives being invalidated, ignored, told that we need to put our needs aside to appease the adults, our teachers, our bosses, whoever it is.  But when we finally hear that voice and identify what’s missing, it’s a breath of fresh air, a key to what we’ve been missing.

This is work I’m engrossed in at the moment and it is super uncomfortable.  There are moments it feels foolish, but when I’ve really listened, it’s been amazing.  I shared the Harry Potter experience with you from a few weeks ago and I’m not sure I was ever more child-like.  It was the greatest experience I’ve had since I was able to really connect and play with my actual child.  We’ve talked about the value of play and I will tell you that feeling of laughing and joy that enveloped my being in that moment (and when playing with my son) is unlike any other.  I’m trying to be very aware of how I interact with my boy because I often find myself telling him how it should be done—and I always regret it.  Yes, I want him to learn the basics, but I want his creativity highlighted and his joy expressed. And inner-child work is about that at its core: finding and expressing the creativity, joy, and love we had as children.

Once we clear the clutter and accept that there are parts of us we simply need to re-engage, it becomes easier.  It’s about connecting with something that was never truly lost, but something we didn’t have the courage to engage with regularly so it became a spectator.  But once that spectator started suffering, it needed to be set free—and it tells us so in many ways.  The act of acknowledging and allowing those parts of us to come through is significant.  It’s freeing.  And it’s necessary.  Those unhealed parts of us, whatever caused the wound, need to be acknowledged and loved as much as we can.  It’s an embracing of who we are.  Truthfully, that inner child, that part that knows joy inherently, is far wiser than we give it credit for.  We only think we need to do the things we do, the inner-child, and the ever present children in our lives, KNOW what we need to do.  Love this life and experience every joyful moment of it while we can.  Don’t waste a drop of that joy, fill your cup so much it infects others with the same feeling.  Listen and love and live your life as it’s meant to be.

“When you walk out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in,” Haruki Murakami.  Continuing on our discussion of reframing and revising the past, another perspective on this is simply that we are meant to grow and evolve and the storms we face are designed to facilitate that growth.  We aren’t meant to hurt, we are meant to learn.  And there is no running away from the fact that growth is painful—we’ve talked about that often here.  Sometimes we bring ourselves back to the same situation hoping it won’t be a fight this time, or hoping that the winds aren’t as strong.  The reality is, sometimes all we are meant to do is stand in our strength and say, “You didn’t knock me down.”

Yes, the storms of life change us.  The trajectory of life is pretty ephemeral—we experience joys and losses simultaneously. We spend our precious time doing things we wouldn’t choose for ourselves for the sake of others.  We face challenges to grow and to learn.  Not to mention that life truly does move at an incredible pace.  And all of it is meant to show us how amazing this life is, to not take it for granted, to learn to really be in the moment, and to find joy.  We have made life so complicated when the point of it really is to simply enjoy it.  We get to do what brings us joy to bring joy to others.  We aren’t meant to get stuck in the storm—and we certainly aren’t meant to create our own storms, which, if we are honest, we do a majority of the time to justify certain behaviors. Life is too short to spend it miserable.

When the storms come, because they will come, learn to stand firm.  Stand assured.  Stand flexible. Stand humbled and know that you were given the chance to face it and learn more about who you are.  But once the lesson is clear, get out of the storm.  Allow the experiences you’ve faced to change you, to mold you, and appreciate that you’re moving up.  Appreciate that what you weather allows you to teach others how to navigate that as well.  You are meant to alchemize your experience into the greater good for all, to play your part, and to find your purpose.  The storms aren’t meant to break you, they are meant to teach you.    

Not to have multiple sappy pieces this week, but we need to examine the emotion behind our actions and follow the path to how it got us where we are.  I’ve shared a lot over the years here.  My anxiety, my general fears, my struggle with work, my struggle with making decisions, letting go of people-pleasing, my losses and gains, my obsession with time (specifically my fear of it), my little triumphs in knowing myself, and my complete failures in relationships with those I love, the moments I know how to take care of me and the moments I go against everything I know.  I mean, I don’t share everything in my life but I’m pretty open.  With all of that, I’ve also been pretty candid about my regrets and how I’ve let my fears call the shots in too many areas of my life, and that I have more regrets than I want to carry.

Perhaps it’s stubbornness that doesn’t allow me to reframe what happened in my current context.  Maybe I still carry a bit too much of the martyr syndrome.  And there’s always the chance that I’m still not clear enough in who I am to know which way to move forward, to boldly state what I really want—or maybe I want too much and the universe is confused on what to do first.  Either way, I’m definitely one who preaches that we can learn from our past but I have a hard time accepting that in my own life.  Jay Shetty suggests we can revise our history.  We can ease up a bit and create space for that reframing of the past.  Sometimes the lessons don’t come forth for years—or we don’t understand it for years.  Just because we can’t see the immediate value doesn’t mean there won’t be something valuable down the road.  We also have the opportunity to assign value and give the event meaning—we can say, “This taught me X” and be grateful for it.  There are times the universe wants you to do that so you can move forward. 

And for those who are impatient or have ADHD and who struggle with time, we can give ourselves the constant reminder that just because we don’t see immediate value it doesn’t mean there won’t be value. I don’t pretend for a second that it’s easy to keep that perspective when it feels like things are falling apart—I have a melt-down at least once a week.  Yet even I have to admit that life has a funny way of taking an insignificant moment and making it relevant or letting things fall apart only to reveal the path to the exact destination we want on the other side.  The past that previously gave us pain now becomes meaningful and we understand why things happened as they did.  I’d love to say I’ve witnessed it more often in my life, but that could be more to do with my stubbornness than it not happening.  Sometimes we just have to accept things as they are, sometimes we just have to trust we will understand it later.  But we don’t have to view our past with regret if we trust it’s for the greater good.