The human ego is fragile, the human is resilient.  The human being doesn’t care for what others think.  Its purpose is to fulfill itself and grow and achieve.  To create and explore and have fun.  The ego worries about how we appear and what others think.  It is a luxury to have the time to worry about what others think, because if that is the greatest issue we have, we aren’t stuck in survival.  We often equate status and appearance to survival.  If we don’t fit in, it is a social or professional death.  Neither of those is life ending—it is merely the end of that KIND of life, or that phase of life.  We can always rebuild.  So many times life doesn’t go how we think it will—and it isn’t necessarily meant to.  The human body will survive being told no.  It will survive doors closing in our lives.  Again, it isn’t the end of our life, it is the end of that way of life—and that is a key indicator of growth.  The human is able to withstand so much more than we think we can.  So often we equate discomfort as a threat.  The goal of life isn’t to be comfortable—Gary Brecka says that aging is the active pursuit of comfort.  And there is truth to that.  The more we seek to make ourselves comfortable rather than fulfill our purpose, we lose touch with the ability to make our body function properly.  The ego tells us we need to be right, we need to be comfortable and we ignore the body screaming at us that it wants to move, to be free.

I’ve been privileged to witness a wide spectrum of experiences.  I’ve seen people living their lives to the absolute fullest, in the complete expression of who they are and I’ve witnessed the death of dreams, the end of a way of being.  I’ve witnessed people deciding to throw it all away and start over again.  I’ve felt the calling to do that for myself as well.  I’ve also been privileged to befriend people who have pulled themselves out of the mud a million times.  They are constant reminders that, with support, we can do anything.  They are constant reminders that we need to keep life in perspective because things happen, whether we understand the reason or not—life happens and we have to deal with it as it comes.   I have a friend who has been through some unimaginable scenarios, and I’ve seen her smile nearly every day I’ve known her.  I’ve never seen anyone be brought down by so much still be so strong.  It’s not just taking it on the cuff, there is never even a question of, “Why did this happen?”  This isn’t to say that things are perfect—people with that level of trauma still compensate in some way.  My friend has a tendency to need to always be right no matter the subject.  It’s partially an ego thing because she feels safe being right and she likes the attention, but also a defense mechanism.  She can control what she knows, she can’t control what happened to her.  Plus a history of questionable decisions makes her feel like she needs to prove she is smart.

The point is this: the human being isn’t meant to protect the idea of itself.  It is meant to protect it’s body and live in the fullest version of who they are.  We are meant to trust that we are safe enough to be who we are because the world needs that—we wouldn’t be here if that weren’t true.  We don’t need to spend time protecting an image because we will never be able to control how people perceive us no matter how carefully we curate the image.  We are all subject to interpretation based on other people’s experiences.  It’s pointless to spend time trying to be a certain way or to try and control how people see us because it is up to them in the end.  We can let go of the ego and survive—we can’t let go of our being.  Success looks different to everyone because we have different goals.  There is no way to quantify or qualify what is the “Best” or how things should be—we all have different goals and definitions of what success is.  Someone will interpret what we do as a mistake no matter what so we might as well learn to do what feels right to us.  Let the ego die—let the fragileness of interpretation go.  Develop the resilience and the fortitude to stand firmly in who we are.  That is where true strength lies.  When we know who we are, we welcome all facets of ourselves without shame, fear, or regret.  We don’t care what others think because we know who we are and what we need.  We simply ARE.  At that stage we no longer need ego.  We just need to be—and it doesn’t have to look how others say it should.  Welcome it all, dive all in, be all that we are.    

“Remember you are the designer, curator and architect of your life and you always have the power to rearrange, alter, and dictate how you want it to look,” unknown.  When we understand the power we actually have in this life, it can be overwhelming and even frightening.  There is also great joy in it but, especially in Western society, we are trained to fear responsibility. We are taught it’s dangerous to go out on our own and take those kinds of chances, that things like that only pan out for certain people under certain circumstances.  We all have the power and the only thing that we need to know is that keeping us blind to it is intentional and other people benefit from it.  That’s enough for me to start taking action to rearrange my life and who has access to me—that’s something we always have control over.  As we learn to accept who we are, to accept the position we are in, to accept the responsibility for our roles in getting where we are, it’s easier to see that we have the power to change it moving forward.  We can be very intentional and specific with the life we want—we just have to be bold enough to act on it.

I’ve talked about it a bunch of times here—life isn’t meant to be stagnant.  We aren’t meant to decide who we are at 18 years old and be that person for the rest of our lives.  We lived with this idea for so long that we needed to know who we were when we weren’t even out of our teen years.  Granted, different times experienced different events in lives and they spent their lives living, not behind the screen all the time.  But so much can happen in 1, 5, 10, 15 years—at any time. Things can happen in the blink of an eye and suddenly all the rules change.  We have new information to make decisions with and we need to integrate it because it doesn’t agree with what we already know.  That’s ok.  We are meant to challenge ourselves and to grow and we need to leave room for those adaptations in our lives.  Being rigid makes us brittle.  We also have the ability to simply decide that something isn’t working for us and change it.  If it no longer serves or feels right, we have the ability to shift focus and change what we are doing.

We don’t always need a life altering reason for things to change—sometimes we want to be the ones altering our lives and we decide to do something different.  Commitment and follow through are key.  If we decide to make a change and we stop half-way through the process, we will be disappointed because the effort doesn’t yield the result.  When we confuse the universe, the work doesn’t get done.  In order to design and curate our lives, we need to be clear and decisive and we have to do the work to bring it to life.  No, we don’t always have to know the how, but we certainly have to put in the effort.  We do that by continually making decisions that support our choices.  We are gifted with the ability to have some say in what we want in life—all we have to do is decide and do what it takes to make it happen.  Our lives can look drastically different if we want them to.  The choice is always ours.

Today I am grateful for a slap in the face.  Sometimes when we try to change we get caught up in what we are doing.  Especially if we have a proclivity for fixation.  I’ve been so fixated on the changes I’ve been trying to make that I haven’t taken into consideration the integration of it.  I’ve jumped right to doing and expecting others to do the same.  I’ve been scared about external circumstances I can’t control so I fell right back into trying to control everything around me.  Some of it is about me stepping back and expecting people to step up and when it hasn’t happened I’ve fallen into frustration and anger.  Other things are about not understanding where people are coming from, how they can forget certain things etc.  I’ve had some power struggles with my kid lately and I was just given his report card. He has done beautifully.  So much more than the effort I’ve seen at home.  I can’t get so caught up in what I think things should look like that I forget there are new ways to do things now.  Some of it I may not be meant to understand, I just have to let it be.  But I’m glad for this reminder that all is well, that I need to accept more. 

Today I am grateful for opportunities.  There truly come moments in life where the opportunity comes out of left field.  Sometimes it’s hard to see an opportunity as such when you aren’t expecting it to look a certain way.  Sometimes the universe gets creative, in my experience when I’ve been in some fairly desperate moments.  Then it literally feels like the lifeline is being extended—but up until that moment it can feel like we are about to drown, like the land will never be in sight again.  In those situations, we certainly wouldn’t refuse any type of help, even if it’s a piece of driftwood floating by.  We’d cling to it.  So we need to keep our eyes open and be grateful for all the opportunities that come our way.  You never know which one will be the exact thing you’re looking for. 

Today I am grateful for intuition.  Along with opportunity there are situations where our body and our instincts cue us to something going on.  Even if we can’t tell specifically what it is, our body’s are often aware of something being off before we are.  Sometimes our ability to perceive that issue is dulled because humans have great capacity to ignore their intuition and to convince themselves that what they feel is second to what they see.  Eyes lie, my friends.  We were given instincts for a reason and if something is telling us that something is wrong, we need to learn to believe that.  The last week has provided some interesting developments in my professional world, none of it substantiated, but every fiber of my being is screaming that something is happening, something is coming—and certain people around me are savvy/privy to information that isn’t being shared with the whole group.  In that regard, we have the choice to ignore it and take it in stride until the ball drops, we can behave as if we are waiting for the other shoe to drop (living in fear), or we can be proactive and trust it—dig a bit more or start making some moves to change.  I spent the majority of my life allowing others to decide what information I was worthy of knowing.  At 40 years old, that isn’t a game I’m willing to play any longer.  I have no choice but to trust my instincts, and I respect myself enough to know when respect is no longer on the table.  I choose to trust my intuition.  I do not take that for granted.

Today I am grateful for redefining my focus and efforts.  As the life I knew slowly fades away, I find myself diving in differently with this one.  I spent a lot of time curating this life, attaining the things I have in my home, the things I wanted to surround myself with.  Even the people I choose to have around me.  How I behave and eat.  Walking into a new life means I am on unfamiliar territory and I don’t always know how to behave.  I don’t know how this version of me reacts to certain things yet.  Old habits still rest just below the surface and I need to be very cautious and cognizant of what I’m thinking/saying/feeling.  But I am able to lean into that new version of myself more easily than I have before. 

Today I am grateful for the chaos and clutter.  This doesn’t mean I’m inviting chaos and cutter in my life but the last few weeks have made me look at it differently.  While there has been so much stuff around it was difficult to think at times, and it was also indicative of me trying to hold onto things in a certain way, the truth is there is something more to the clutter.  Yes, it actually did provide me some level of mental protection, a barrier and a refuge when I really needed it.  Then there is the actual component of having it: I’ve led such a beautiful life and I have been privileged enough to be able to accumulate that type of clutter.  I have created a life where I brought in all of these things around me through my own work and effort.  At each moment those were exactly the things I wanted.  Each little thing that rests here is a little thing I wanted to remember.  I am blessed to have been able to create the chaos and clutter.  I will never say it didn’t need organization, but the effort I put in at the time had a purpose and it was served.  I am grateful I was able to do that and still be able to redefine what I need. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.