“No tree is said can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell,” CG Jung.  I found this quote roughly 2 months ago, if not longer and I’ve been holding on to it because the piece wasn’t quite coming together.  I loved it but I wasn’t sure which way I wanted to go with it.  I almost deleted it a few times thinking it wasn’t something I needed to address after all.  Each time I went to get rid of the quote, something stopped me.  Quite out of nowhere, I was listening to one of my card readings, and the man who does the readings said it.  It was in reference to building strength, walking away from what doesn’t serve and the work it takes, and allowing everything to be as it is meant to even if that means it falls apart.  When I first saw it, I initially thought it was an important reminder to accept the dark along with the light and that was referenced in the reading as well.  In order for us to find our balance, we have to connect all facets, through and through.  Coincidentally I’ve been seeing more and more works on spirituality, especially from people I didn’t anticipate, and the common thread is this type of journey: we have to face the depths of who we are and accept that in order to grow to our potential.  Strong roots weather the storm, right?

So, why do I think I’ve been sitting on this and then suddenly it becomes relevant?  This is a clear acknowledgement/nod/sign from the universe that sometimes we just have to trust.  We just have to wait and allow because the universe really does work in its own divine timing.  There is the indicator that we also have to leap, sometimes when we don’t feel ready.  There comes a time when talk isn’t enough anymore.  Planning isn’t enough.  Dreaming isn’t enough.  The universe requires action even if we aren’t fully comfortable with that yet, and right now I am in exactly that situation.  The things I’ve been wanting to do need more and more focus because they are developing—something I’ve asked for and am proud of.  Simultaneously, my current habits and life are also demanding more attention, so the separation of the two, the letting go of the past, the healing, the courage to step forward on the new path, is making it kind of feel like a band-aid about to be torn off.  I can’t continue on the same path, and the growth required means doing things I haven’t done before.  But the more I do what is unfamiliar, the stronger those roots become.  No one ever said growth was comfortable, and going through change, especially in the context of doing things we haven’t done before, is both painful and scary.  It’s painful because learning and growth sometimes hurt and it’s scary because doing new things by feel alone seems dangerous.  And sometimes the past calls us because we always have the choice to blaze forward or return to the familiar.

Everyone’s tree looks different, and everyone grows differently depending on their environment—and different people need different environments.  So in order to stretch both roots and limbs, we need to be in the best environment for us.  That means finding the best place for us even if we have to leave the familiar behind.  Transplanting ourselves is often the most crucial part—we are vulnerable as we expose both root and new growth—some people don’t survive it.  But if we do the work and tend to our needs and instincts, we can navigate through the roughest terrain, the stormiest weather, and still find that peace and that piece of the universe within in us that allows us to grow exactly where we need to be.  The timing of the universe kept this quote in my life as an encouragement through the pivotal time when I was being transplanted—the exact moment I needed to be reminded that it was time to take action because my growth is limited doing what I’m doing.  The exact moment I needed to take a leap for myself no matter what anyone else thought, the exact time I needed to be told to keep going.  Facing the things that hurt me, cutting away the dead/rotted roots, removing the dead/sick leaves is a hell we all experience—it hurts to lose pieces of ourselves.  But now I know I have been encouraged every step of the way, and this transformation is exactly what will keep the growth stable, healthy, and successful. Take the leap, especially when it seems scary—the universe will catch us. 

I saw a short post on Instagram the other day and I wanted to share it (I’m not sure who the person was that originally posted it). There is something so simple in the truths but I know I’ve struggled to trust and live in that way.  So, here are the six things:

1. Our paths may be harder because we have a higher calling.  We require more lessons to achieve a different goal, a goal that others may not be able to see or understand.  We may not feel the support we hope for in those circumstances—we must keep going anyway. 

2. If you can attach to it, you can detach from it.  All of our attachment is a choice.  What we deem a belief is a choice.  What we prioritize and focus on is a choice.  So if we have issues with a choice we’ve made, then we can make another one.  When we define ourselves with a choice, that’s when we   

3. If you don’t like something you can’t change, change the only thing that will take away its power: your attention.  Nothing can grow without light so if we remove the spotlight of our focus, the idea/thing will eventually fade away. 

4. Better a passing “oops” than a life time of “What If.”  This one hit HARD.  Oftentimes we get so fixated on the oops that we lose sight of the bigger picture.  If we subscribe to the belief that everything happens for a reason, then it must stand that even the things we struggle with are necessary, there are no accidents.  So if we have the inkling to take something on, then it’s better to go for it and fall so we can learn to get up than to sit there and wonder what it might have been like if we did it when it’s too late. 

5. Evolving involves eliminating.  I loved this one.  We’ve been talking the last few days about letting go of who we were in a previous stage of our lives in favor of who we are now.  This means actively letting go of what doesn’t serve our present.  When we are able to let go of what we had, we make room for what is to come.  We are also showing that we have faith in the universe to provide what we need, that we can release our fear of not having what we need and that anything we let go of will be replaced with what we need in the future. 

6.  The calmer we are, the clearer we think.  I’ve often spoken of the absolute chaos in my brain.  I will say again and again, this brain is like having infinite trains on about 20 tracks all going at the same time.  That state manifested pure chaos in my life.  Trying to do all the things all the time with no focus created an endless supply of started-but-not-finished in all arenas of my life.  Learning to slow down is where the clarity came in.  I knew I couldn’t stop it, but I could shift it.    

I hope these helped!

I want to continue our discussion from yesterday regarding being different people, wanting different things at different stages/ages in our lives.  Sometimes we talk about getting back to what we were “before” a certain thing.  Before that incident, before the kids, before the job, etc.  I don’t know if it’s some sort of engrained homing device we carry as humans or if it’s a sense of loss, a yearning for what we knew.  No matter how much we want it, we never really get back to that person.  We just learn to find the feeling of normalcy again.  We learn to be who we are.  As we love ourselves fiercely and completely as we are, we learn to get back to that acclimated state.  But it isn’t without grief.  Indeed, the person we were before whatever incident it may be, is gone to some degree.  There are of course pieces within us, but we can’t get back to who we were in the sense of the words.  It takes time to grieve the loss of the person we were and learn to love the person we are.  That person still exists and wants to be honored.  Sometimes we think we have moved on when we’ve really just substituted new things with the same behaviors. 

I can’t tell you how clearly I feel the fear of that little girl inside me as I try to put all of those fears to rest.  She is afraid of dying, being forgotten—and no one really wants to die, especially the parts of us that struggled to be recognized in the first place.  I understand her fear because that is still a real fear I have to this day.  I hear all of the amazing things she wanted, the things she wanted to be.  The potential to do literally anything.  She had 0% fear, she was bold, brave, confident in herself, she knew she held herself to a higher standard.  Then the weight of her fears crushing down on top of the failed support, and unnecessary judgements of those around her, it began to paralyze her.  She started questioning if that certainty was really so certain.  If those decisions were really the right ones.  She started making the safer choices and settling for the first thing she could get.  She lost sight of the magic and her ability to not only take on the world, but to create WITH the world.  She felt a spark but never found the fuel to ignite it, and there is real pain in something unfulfilled.

I still carry that behavior with me, looking for praise from my boss, or thinking about what my parents would think of a certain decision.  I still carry the fear that all I know I am meant to do isn’t meant to be seen through by me.  That the patterns I’m meant to break will continue to break me.  In many ways I am still paralyzed—but now I understand it is the little girl I used to be and I need to tell her it is safe to move into the totality of my being, to live the life I was always capable of.  See, I have to mourn her because I know she tried her best, she worked within the framing of the beliefs she was given.  And she did a really good job of it.  At the same time there was something more, that burning that needed to be sparked into an active flame.  So, now as I become someone somewhere between the two and reconcile the fears with the desire, someone new is emerging.  This someone is the amalgamation of all I though ti could be with all I knew, and though she is powerful, she is still learning to take her first steps.  That doesn’t mean she isn’t strong enough to get there, it just means she is still in the emerging phase.   

As I undergo this evolution, I am reminded that all evolution is a death, and in order to grow, we must undergo as many deaths and iterations as it takes to get where we need to be.  We die over and over again each day.  If we accept that with grace, the transition isn’t so jarring.  For some of us, we don’t have the choice and that awakening is like having the curtains thrown open with a spotlight in our faces.  In those circumstances, when we finally wake up to what we were meant to do, especially after a lifetime of being told we can’t, it can take a bit longer to steady ourselves and move forward.  In that way too, the deer learns to walk.  We can find our way by trusting our instincts and welcoming who we are instead of accepting a construct we were given.  Be grateful for that person because they only did what they knew.  Now that we know more, we can do more.  We can allow ourselves to be more, to share more, to open to new opportunities.  We can move beyond the death of what we were by embracing the birth of what we are.  Take the time to grieve but do not dwell there.  Become all we are and learn to walk on our own two feet again, and walk in the direction we know/feel is for us.  That is how we honor who we were and show our gratitude—by gracefully and gratefully taking the next step up in our lives.  What a beautiful way to create space for the new version of us.  What a beautiful way to move forward.       

Today I am grateful for miracles.  I spent the majority of my life trying to control outcomes—how things happen, when they happen, working extra hard to make it happen, planning every detail so things would go exactly how I thought they should.  I never considered that it wasn’t my job to do all the work for everything I wanted.  I knew with absolute certainty that I was responsible for making things happen.  I never considered that I didn’t have to do so much, I just needed to put the intention out there and enjoy, things could come to me in their own way.  Lately, I’ve had little say in things, some by choice, others not so much.  I see that things still unfold and certain events that I’ve been working toward are coming together while others seem further away.  The ones that are coming together seem to have little to do with what I’m pushing for and the things I’m pushing seem to run away.  I don’t know, maybe as I’m getting older I’m seeing things more clearly.  But I’ve been on the receiving end of seeing how things will come together or fall apart with or without our participation.  I am grateful for both scenarios.

Today I am grateful for time.  I spent the last week off of work and it was exactly what I needed.  I needed time to work on my projects, to center my mind a bit, to organize my life a bit more.  I did all of that and more.  I took my time to do things I love, to expand some other practices, and to develop some of my projects.  Doing all that work allowed me to prioritize things and come up with some sort of idea of what I need to do moving forward—or at least what I want to do moving forward.  I haven’t had dedicated time to myself to think in a while, I’ve just been on this hamster wheel of the same routine.  Doing the same things every day won’t get us where we want to be and that includes thinking the same thoughts.  Spending time finding things that feel better, that align better, that I can prioritize better simply made sense.  While not all the stress is away, I am certainly feeling better than I was.

Today I am grateful to let go.  This is a tough one for me and one I think I will be working on for a while.  As I said above, I’ve spent a lot of my life controlling the outcome.  If I wanted something, I thought I had to make it happen.  I’m not talking in the context of what I’ve shared here over the years as far as setting an intention and doing the work that gets us there.  I’m talking about putting people in their place and making things go exactly a certain way and if anything derailed, I would derail as well—vocally, loudly, and dramatically.  In the course of this week off, my son had one of the worst melt downs I’ve ever witnessed.  He had been super clingy and emotional and was for a lot of the week and it finally boiled over.  It was in that moment I flashed back to myself at his age and I knew I had to stop everything I’ve been doing with him.  I thought I’d been more progressive and attentive than my parents and here the cycle was repeating—loudly and emotionally.  It was in that moment I saw the pressure I have been putting on my family, the two people closest to me.  I had a wonderful conversation with my husband about it and I apologized.  I felt like I could see the stress melt off of him.  The pressure was unintentional and my intensity stemmed from having so many things I want to do and fear of not being able to—it had nothing to do with wanting them perfect.  So, presence is key.  Joy is key.  I have to trust more.  Let go.

Today I am grateful for avenues opening up.  I received an offer this week and I’ve been teetering on the edge of taking it or not.  This offer is something I’ve dreamed of for a long time but it isn’t quite in the package I imagined it would be.  Given the context of not forcing things to happen, this felt forced because it originated from my outreach.  Now, I’m incredibly grateful for it because it has shown me without a shadow of doubt that I have potential where I’m going but I’m worried because this wasn’t organic.  It took me digging, organizing a phone call, and will require additional resources from me up front outside of my work.  I wasn’t prepared for the terms of the return, either.  So this is an opportunity and one way that I CAN go about achieving my goal, but it feels like a moment when I also have the opportunity to get honest and ask if this is exactly what I want.  Is this exactly what I envisioned when I put this idea out there?  Do I want to act out of fear of missing out because I’m afraid to wait for my vision to come together how it should?  As it happens I’m reading Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza and he shared the story of his daughter manifesting a trip to Italy.  She found an option of a way to get there that wasn’t quite right and he challenged her to align more, not to accept it if it wasn’t exactly what she wanted.  She did just that and shortly after the EXACT thing she wanted appeared.  So perhaps this is an opportunity for me to get even more clear, have faith, and wait for it to come to me with a more precise vision.  I’m still grateful for the option because the work has merit and I needed to know that. 

Today I am grateful for timing.  The last few days of my time off didn’t go exactly how I thought they would.  I ended up with a bit of a cold and was knocked out for a couple of days.  To be honest, most of the week didn’t go as I planned.  I finally gave up trying to make it go how I had thought it should go because I was wearing myself out.  As soon as I stopped all the doing and started listening to what my body was telling me, to what my heart was telling me, I started feeling better.  My husband and son also seemed to have a better time as well.  We ran into my brother and he was so happy.  He just happened to be leaving his house exactly as we were pulling up and he told us to come with him.  I easily could have said no to going to see him, and I easily could have said no we can’t go because we had just come from where he was going—but something told me to just say yes.  To just allow it.  We did and it was amazing.  We had a wonderful morning together.  Had we been a few minutes earlier or later, we wouldn’t have seen him—the universe indeed has its plans. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.      

During a meeting with one of my team members the other day, I found myself repeating the phrase, “I just have to do x (fill in whatever x may be to move forward in the business),” over and over again.  I’d listened carefully on our call the week before and was feeling both guilty and excited about the momentum of the team, but I saw the way things could work out if I made some changes—that’s all I was trying to convey.  My teammate told me to stop looking at all of the things we “should” be doing and do what has been working.  She reminded me that I’ve had some success in the work and that those are the things I should focus on.  Yes, everything else the team talked about should be banked for reference as tools to use at some point, but for now, just get the ball rolling with what works.  When we know what works for us, it’s easier to build confidence and to stay off the fence (like we talked about yesterday).    

She also said when we do what works for us, what has brought us success, that’s enough.  We don’t need to be measured by someone else’s stick.  We need to measure how we feel and what we’ve given and how we move forward.  Stay focused, stay the course.  Remember what we’ve accomplished and how we got there and look at how we can do that again.  Replicate what works for us and success will come.  It isn’t about doing exactly what other people tell us, it’s about following our feelings and instincts.  Some people branch out quickly, others focus on one area.  The ones with a lot of success take their experiences and figure out ways to help others, they aren’t afraid to invest in themselves and trust their stories, to use those stories as leverage.  Sharing the human experience is an incredibly powerful thing and we have more in common with people than we don’t. 

We don’t need to spend our time with excessive doing.  This is the opposite of what we talked about with sitting on the fence—there are times we try to do too many things at once, thinking that we need to do more.  There is a sweet spot between sitting on that fence and doing all the things—and that is right where we accept ourselves and do what works for us.  That is where trust develops for us.  The key to trusting others is to know how to trust ourselves first.  When we take on all the things, it tends to come from a place of proving, but when we do all of that “doing,” we lose as much momentum as doing nothing because eventually the overwhelm leads us to do nothing.  So when we are clear, focused, and assured of our direction, we know how to discern that spot.  So do more of what works, it can only open the door to more success. Remember, success looks different for everyone–so do what works for us.

“When you’re on the fence, just do it,” Shaun T.  We’ve talked about leaning in to how we feel, pausing to ask ourselves how we feel, and the difference between nervous and excited.  The mind isn’t very good at discerning how we feel—more often than not we need to spend some time interpreting that.  This is why we have to trust our instincts and our bodies.  We know more than we think we do, we are simply trained to ignore what we know.  When we face a decision and the outcome can go in either direction, or we feel an affinity toward either side, or even if it is between stop and go, the truth is we really should just leap.  We can sit on the sidelines as long as we want but that won’t give us any results.  The only wan to know is to do.  We can’t get lost in potential outcomes, or hypotheticals, because the mind can play out a bunch of scenarios—and that isn’t always a good thing because of our negativity bias.  So there comes a point where we have to eschew the consequences and just go with it, especially if there is a glimmer of hope in whatever it is.  Sometimes even the smallest inkling that something is exciting or feels right is all we need.

When we spend too much time in what if, we deny ourselves the opportunity to grow.  We deny ourselves the experience of whatever may come from trying.  As someone who spent a lot of time on the sidelines out of fear, I can tell you this feeling sucks—not only is it like missing out on things, but there are times I don’t feel equipped to make decisions or take action because I don’t know what to do.  And sitting on the sidelines diminishes our ability to trust ourselves, to follow our instincts.  The world preys on that because those who don’t know what they want can be easily swayed toward what others tell them to want.  It’s the game of distraction and the only one that benefits is not us.  Whether it’s because we think we can’t do it or because we are thinking too much, we can’t think ourselves out of the situation.  Sometimes the only way through, the only way to get clarity is simply to do it, no matter how scary the leap is.  Marie Forleo says clarity comes from action, not thought, so the days we aren’t feeling like we can do it, we simply need to do the thing.  Even if we can’t bring ourselves to do the actual thing, we need to do something and trust that no matter what happens, we can handle it.

There is no need to fear the doing because the truth is we will never know what happens until we actually do it.  We can spend time worrying but it won’t get us anywhere—that’s an action of the mind.  It’s up to us to take the mind and put the body to work.  To take the ideas and bring it to reality.  We’ve talked about the body before and how the mind has trouble distinguishing between nervous and excitement.  There truly is no physiological difference between the two.  That means if we choose to put excitement into action we can move forward.  If we choose to stay in fear, we close ourselves off to what may come of it.  Don’t allow thought to stop us.  If there is a thought telling us that this might be what we need to do even if it seems scary, remind ourselves that the thigs that scare us are often what we need to do to grow.  Move forward and do the damn thing.  The mind will tell us every story we can think of based on our experience and knowledge base—that doesn’t make it true.  The only thing that’s true is what comes from taking the leap.  Don’t miss out by allowing “what if” to stop us.            

I love seeing my husband become himself.  This isn’t something I thought I would be happy about because I’ve experienced a different side of this.  When my husband was out to find himself down other avenues as we’ve grown together, it has nearly always ended in some type of trouble, normally financially related.  He has a tendency to think that the answer is always in acquiring and spending and then not wanting to take responsibility for it.  But this time is completely different.  Yes, he is still spending money but he is much more thoughtful about it.  The thing that is really important this time around is that he has found a group of people with a different set of values—and a clear set of values—that seems to be shifting him.  And he seems to have found his niche.  My husband has always had the ability to be at home literally anywhere he goes.  He is an adapter and he is REALLY good at connecting with people and it has always made me a bit jealous, but this again is a different awareness of himself, of his abilities.  It’s like something triggered in his primal brain about being able to provide and he is proud that he recognizes he has been able to do it all along. 

While I can’t say I’m for the action of what he’s doing (he’s hunting so it makes me a bit sad for the animals), I know this is something he genuinely enjoys and he loves the people he is doing it with. It makes me feel really good seeing him do something he enjoys because I’m not sure he ever found what he liked.  He spent so much time numbing himself in unhealthy ways that he never took the time to find that thing that brought him joy.  I feel like he never wanted to do that because he was afraid he’d never get it.  Now he sees more of what he is capable of.  He is learning to trust and that means learning to trust himself too, seeing what he is capable of doing, that he can build the life he wants.  Learning new things about the person he wants to be.  That is 100% worth it. It really is a beautiful thing to see someone come into their own and find their element, their niche.  Confidence is a sexy thing and it’s contagious.         

It makes me want to be the person I want to be as well.  Stop playing small or holding myself back.  Fear is a bitch, anxiety is obnoxious, and insecurity is a bastard.  Those things are the killers of any dream or any happiness.  That’s the whole point—we have to learn to trust ourselves in spite of (and because of) our fear, anxiety, and insecurity.  All it takes is actively getting out there and doing the work to see what we want to do and what we are capable of doing.  When we do that work, it shines a light for others to do the same, it inspires others to do the same. So in finding ourselves, we are helping others find their way as well. We are helping people be who they are meant to be, help them feel better, help them feel supported.  Help people find what they want in life and be a resource to help them get there.  So as selfish as it may sound at times, watching him is a reminder to keep myself on the right track as well. We all need reminders that we can do it.  It’s ok to need that reminder every now and then.  The key is to take that reminder and take action on what we want.  Roy Bennet says, “Learn to light a candle in the darkest moments of someone’s life.  Be the light that helps others see; it is what gives life its deepest significance”.  Don’t be afraid to be the light for someone else, and don’t be afraid to ask to sit in someone’s light for a while—the candle doesn’t dim when we light someone else’s, the light gets brighter.

When respect is no longer being served it’s time to walk away.  We just need to have faith and strength to do the walking.  This coincides with what I was talking about in gratitude yesterday, and these are habits that we all need to develop and skills that will serve us in so many ways.  I wish I could say that this happened overnight, that I knew I was being treated poorly and simply walked away.  That’s not how it went.  It was a slow detachment and something I am still learning to do.  Humans are pretty good at recognizing when something is off but we aren’t always discerning on pinpointing what the exact issue is or knowing how to resolve it.  Additionally our relationship with ego is often tenuous at best.  We fixate on being the best and being right and that deters from doing what is right, including what is right for ourselves.  There is some irony in there that we protect our egos but engage in the very behavior that can cause harm to our character.  This isn’t about people placating wants, it’s about respecting each other as humans and allowing people to be who they are without judging what works for them.  We can’t control anyone around us, so what we need to do is look at our patterns and habits, both in what we do and what we attract.  That’s all we have control over, our own actions.  That’s when we can start doing some work on who we are—and it does take work.  Developing awareness always does. 

One, to break the habits we have to be entirely conscious and aware of when we fall back into them.  It’s uncomfortable and can be challenging at times to stop an engrained pattern when you’ve already been triggered to repeat it.  Two, learning the new pattern takes time, dedication, and patience because it is new.  It hasn’t had time to solidify in our minds as the natural response to our stressors and when we are under stress, we will naturally fall to our engrained habits/thoughts.  Three, while breaking habits and patterns or jumping into something new, we will all face a period where we are still somewhat reliant on the old ways whether financially/emotionally and the new quite literally can’t support us yet—for me, it was the financial crutch of needing a 9-5 but knowing that I had to break out into something more even though I couldn’t afford to not work.  I wasn’t rolling in the money by any means, but I definitely needed that income.  What we need to understand is that sometimes it isn’t that the new can’t support us, it’s that we haven’t developed legs that can stand on the new ground yet.  It’s kind of like sea legs.  We’ve been on a boat that someone else is steering for so long and they’ve chartered us through the roughest of seas.  We may have even had to jump off and swim to shore.  When we hit land, it can feel uncertain and scary and we need to learn to navigate our way around, trust ourselves to survive and make our way, and learn that not only can we stand on our own, we can run.

We often mistake respect as an issue with authority or hierarchy.  We perceive people as in a higher position than us or we fear what they can do to us or we are born into a system that prioritizes certain people over others.  The truth is respect is about allowing life to happen.  It’s about removing our personal expectations on other people and allowing them to be who they are.  When we have people who work to constrain us in any way or those that hold us to unrealistic expectations, they are demonstrating they are less interested in the value we can add as ourselves and more interested in the value we can add to their agenda.  People who use other people to fulfill their agenda with no regard for whether or not their interests align do not respect the humanity of others.  This isn’t to say that we don’t all need help at times, it is to say that we don’t hold an expectation of someone else to be a certain way when they are not that, and we don’t berate them when we realize they aren’t that way.  When we are at a table where there is no respect, where we are being constricted into something unrecognizable, yes, we indeed must walk away.  We must shed that version that wants approval and simply begin the work of detachment.  Work on developing our own strength, our own skills, finding our own interests and when we follow that, we find purpose.  When we find purpose we are unstoppable.  Keep focused and stay the course.  Have enough respect for ourselves to do what we need to do for our own wellbeing.  Honor who we are and leave behind what isn’t serving.

You’re not going to stop the train but we can shift the track.  As someone with ADD I realized that I spent a lot of energy on trying to control the thoughts themselves, like when they would come, when they would go.  I realized that in my entire life I can’t recall a time when I didn’t have something racing through my mind, usually multiple things at the same time.  I am not exaggerating when I say there were literally moments I couldn’t keep up with my own brain.  Completely unrelated things all running at the same time.  I share this because I so often compared this to multiple trains running through my mind at the same time.  Honestly that’s how the behavior of stopping the trains started.  I couldn’t stand that my thoughts not only came and went so fast but that I couldn’t follow enough of them to make a decision or hear anything really coherently in my head.  I think that’s why writing helped—it would at least sort of kind of narrow my focus.  Regardless, it took me my entire adult life up to this point to look at this differently: I can’t stop the train—the thoughts will ALWAYS come, and really that’s a good thing because if those thoughts stop, we’re dead—but I can shift the track.

Yes, it’s similar to what I talked about with steering our ship by directing our sails, but this is more important than that.  This is the channeling of energy.  It’s not just the focus, it’s the learning and harnessing the ability to not get run over by our own thoughts.  When we shift the track, it can be as simple as changing perspective.  All we have to do is understand these thoughts aren’t out to harm us and they can only harm us if we allow it.  Our thoughts are nothing more than markers, indicators of where we are—more like a guidepost.  If we are consistently thinking something not aligned with what we feel or if those thoughts creep up, then it’s a reminder to pause and see where that’s coming from—are we in an environment we aren’t used to, are we stepping into something uncomfortable?  If that is the case then we need to take it as a good sign that we have the ability to pause and redirect the course of those thoughts—and no matter what, we don’t have to believe them. 

The other part of this that feels more complicated to explain (for me at least) is that the idea of stopping the train seems to come with so much force.  Like we have the ability to stop our natural functions, one of the very indicators we are alive.  At the same time, we do need to be aware of how to direct our thoughts so there does seem to be an element of control.  And still at the same time we have to discern how to go with the flow and allow—to lean into what IS.  I think the reason this is so complicated is because we are trying to equate a feeling to an action.  We know what it feels like to be in flow and to steer the direction, to make choices.  But we can’t actively describe how we do it.  It’s a feeling, not an action.  It’s a presence and an interaction with energy.  A decision and acceptance.  The point of working with our mind and our feelings is never about forcing them to go a certain way, it’s knowing how to discern which thoughts we entertain.  And as we make those choices, the focus becomes clear.  It’s not about stopping anything, it’s about what we choose to entertain with our responses.  THAT we have control over. So don’t make the goal be about stopping anything-make it about understanding and learning to follow the feelings we want.  

Written the other day when falling into old habits at work:  I feel a groove, a dance I do where I am rubbed raw and THEN flow.  I find myself doing things I hate doing on autopilot and with incredible ease and efficiency and clarity—but it’s only after doing what I hate to fit in and be accepted.  The only way I can fit through (fit in) is through wearing away and cutting off parts of myself.  This isn’t a dance I created, it’s the dance I was put into and programmed to do.  I’m tired of my edges being dulled so I can fit in or to gain praise/attention/accolades.  Just because I CAN do it doesn’t mean I SHOULD.  Loving myself means saying yes AND no.  Fine, I fit in, but what did it take?  What did I lose to get here?  What parts of me had to be worn away for the sake of someone telling me my ideas or even my identity is worthy?  What do I gain from doing that?  It seems some pretty significant chunks of my personality, talent, and creativity were worn away over time.  That spark has never been dulled, the spark of creativity, the spark telling me to move forward and do the creative work in my life.  But there seems to be a little less material to work with at times.  I’ve lost the essence of who I am in the process of finding acceptance outside. 

What good is the groove, what good is doing a dance that I don’t even understand (or care to do)?  What good is fitting in if I lost MY rhythm?  What good is fitting in if I was only fitting into what others expected of me?  What good is fitting in if it still isn’t my style in the end?  What good is fitting in if I still can’t stand the outcome?  What good is fitting in if I need to keep cutting away at pieces of me over time until there is nothing left?  I am not here to make myself small so other people are comfortable with me.  I am not here to make myself palatable or easy to manage.  I am not here to give myself up or to give up on myself for the sake of someone else using me as a doormat. (not the same as not helping others, just not going to erase who I am so someone else can succeed over me—their dreams are no more or less important than mine). The groove becomes a rut when we lose sight of ourselves or when we have made ourselves so small that we can’t hear our own voices.  That is dangerous territory because we risk losing ourselves entirely. 

This is when we have to stop the music, stop the noise we hear from the outside (like David Goggins says) and focus on doing the work, our work.  We focus on creating the steps we need to take to achieve our goals.  The more steps we take, the more we help others find their rhythm, we find our own.  We find our creativity, we find what is aligned with who we are, and we put in the work.  We choreograph a new dance, we find the ladder, and we move out of the groove/hole we dug for ourselves.  That groove was never a place to dance, it was a place to wear us down and keep us stuck.  As we climb out of it and learn to hear our own rhythm again, we feel complete and light and we are able to share that with others.  The impact of finding our flow isn’t just for us, it’s for how we interact with the world and inspire others to do the same for themselves.  This world is waiting for our love to light the way, for us to love ourselves enough that we can love others.  For us to be the conduits of an energy that drives us toward something higher—for everyone.  Step away and into the rhythm of what we are meant to do and all becomes clear.