“We see signs along the way, we just don’t pay attention,” Loren Ridinger.  This is about the lies we tell ourselves when we know something is wrong with a situation and we stay.  We ignore all the warnings even when we know that something just isn’t right.  We stick with the things we know will hurt us, the things that can break us and then we act surprised when something backfires.  If we get really honest with ourselves, we can admit that we knew what was coming.  My family has a long history of staying.  Like, when shit hits the fan and we know we should run, we stay.  When we know someone won’t change but we have hope for their potential, we stay.  When we know an opportunity is for us and that little voice is telling us it isn’t, we stay nice and secure in that little bubble.  We set up our own destruction when all the signs were there along the way.  The brain can convince itself of unbelievable things. 

So what happens if we start paying attention?  I think of the time I could have saved and all the things I could have accomplished if I had cut my losses on some facets of my life sooner.  I think of the ease of that life, the one I convinced myself I wasn’t worth having.  I paid attention and I turned down each and every one of those chances that came my way.  I stayed in the rut knowing full well I was burying myself deeper, not building a ladder.  Whether it was in any type of relationship or goal, I managed to get myself right back to where I started.  This is an easy arena to fall into the could have/should have nonsense.  And it is nonsense (even if it’s right) because we can’t change it anyway and the universe said it had to be THIS way so that’s why things went down the way they did.  But what I learned is that we can start paying attention now.  We can start believing in ourselves now. 

When we know who we are and familiarize ourselves with stepping out of the bubbles we made, we start to take our interactions more seriously—or at the least we start to consider or view them differently.  We recognize the truth of the situation sooner than we would have previously and we are better able to navigate and steer ourselves away from a course we don’t want.  We learn to trust our instincts and know that what we pick up on and act on what we know is true.  This is different than impulse—this is about specific decision making.  The truth is not everyone is toxic or has motive to hurt other people—far from it.  That doesn’t make them any less self-serving, so we always need to be on the lookout.  It becomes easier to know what to do because the path is laid out in front of us.  All we have to do is stop pretending we can’t see it. 

“We lie to ourselves to avoid the risk of becoming,” Loren Ridinger. I didn’t want to admit the truth in this statement.  Like our parable yesterday, I didn’t want to take responsibility for anything more than I felt I could handle and I thought I was being practical.  We tell ourselves someday or that we will do it when the time is right knowing full well we are setting some arbitrary standard to mark when we start living our lives. Make no mistake, there are real issues we face that sometime would legitimately impede us from moving forward in a productive manner.  But when we take the every day mundane details and use them as the reason why we can’t get out of performing the every day mundane details, we’ve created our own mental trap.  The things we want to break out of suddenly become the things we are reliant on to keep us in our little bubble.  So we tell ourselves a story where we get to be the victim—we’ve done the work but look, nothing has happened so that’s not my fault!

It is a risk to decide to be something else.  It’s a risk to shed what we know in favor of something we don’t know all on the chance of what could be.  But we can’t let our own thoughts and fears be the very thing that hurts us or holds us back.  We tell ourselves we can’t for whatever reason before we even try—if we don’t try we will never get anywhere anyway.  If the caterpillar never built the cocoon it wouldn’t grow wings.  If the bird never broke out of the shell it would die.  So why do we cut off the exact opportunity we need?  Because we aren’t sure we can carry ourselves through becoming who we are meant to be.  We know who we are, we are comfortable where we are so even if we say we want to make the move to something different, when it comes down to it, it makes it nearly impossible to shift.  We know what we have and we feel safe.

Ending with this concept of safety. We can create the safest nests for ourselves that we love and tend to with care and purpose and several things can still happen:  we can still feel like we need something more, still feel the call that the space is too constricting. After time we may feel the need to change the surroundings entirely but we fear hurting someone’s idea of who we are—or our own because we aren’t living how we thought we would.  The other thing is some outside forces can destroy what we built and we may have 0 control over it.  All the planning, protection, and care in the world will not stop certain things from happening—not even the worst things.  So the point is this: we are afraid of becoming because of what we have built.  We need to start asking ourselves if what we built is still what we want, and more importantly, is it what we need in that moment?  Don’t ignore what we know already which is that we are all fully capable of becoming exactly what we need to be and going higher than we ever thought possible. We just have to take the risk.

There is a story of a fisherman who brings a ruler with him every day while fishing.  He measures every fish he catches, throwing back the big ones.  One day someone asks him why he doesn’t keep the big ones and he replies without hesitation that he only has a 12 inch pan.  Some people see this as a matter of practicality—there isn’t room in the pan for the larger fish.  Some people see this as a problem where the man could have just cut the fish.  But there is one more lesson, one more possibility: what if he just needed to get a bigger pan?  When we limit ourselves to the size of our meal, our speech, our dream, we limit the results we get in our lives.  There comes a time when we have to consider that we aren’t dreaming big enough.  If we break ourselves down to fit in the box (the pan so to speak) we are cutting out or throwing back the pieces of ourselves that could be the most valuable.  How do we solve that?  We need to get a bigger vessel.  Sometimes we need to dream bigger and get rid of the ruler because the only limits we see or feel are in our own minds.  Sometimes we limit what we do because we’re afraid of what more really means—that we CAN do more.  When we remove the box, we remove all limitations, when we see there was never a real measuring stick, anything becomes possible.

Today I am grateful for confidence.  Even if this is something I struggle with daily, I am so grateful for the moments when it comes out.  We had dinner with new friends yesterday evening and they ended up joining us back home so we could play darts and some other games.  I felt some of the old me come out in regards to that younger boldness—perhaps not confidence exactly, but the willingness to try things and put myself out there.  In this case I didn’t do well with the game but I realized off the bat that wasn’t the point.  The point was all of us just having a good time and being with each other.  It’s been a while since I’ve been with people who weren’t in direct competition over anything even if we were playing a competitive game.  We just had fun.  I never considered needing confidence to have fun but the truth is if we are willing to take the chance to have fun we learn things.  So I am grateful to take that chance.

Today I am grateful for good food.  This isn’t something I talk about much but I’ve had a difficult relationship with food most of my life.  I love food, I always have—but I also used it as a coping mechanism.  I struggled with overeating and with sugar addiction specifically (nothing totally out there). Either way the point of being grateful for food is that it doesn’t have to be that kind of mechanism.  Food is a uniter in so many ways, it’s an experience. We bring substances into our body for nourishment and when we do it correctly, our bodies thrive.  Food is a tool and it is amazing what is provided for us with little effort.  Over the last year and half I’ve lost and kept off 40 pounds and that is saying something to healing my relationship with what I thought I needed from food.  But I’ve had a few moments over the year and half, up to and including the last week, where I found myself wanting to fall into old habits and not honoring my limits. But it was in those moments where I felt differently about the test.  It wasn’t about my resolve in those moments—it was about presence.  While we were out of town spending time together on the first family vacation we’ve ever taken together, I realized I didn’t want to worry about what I was consuming.  We were eating things we wouldn’t get back home and the memory of those moments was more important than taking in a few extra calories.  I’ve proven over the last year and a half that I can maintain and that I have the drive and discipline.  I can handle taking the moment to enjoy even if it means a little extra work in the end.  We also had a wonderful meal out the other night and it was a great time together—it was the experience all around.  The food and the people, all of us gathered together to enjoy.  It was lovely.

Today I am grateful for understanding what I have to do.  It’s later in the afternoon than I would normally write this and I had a few moments this morning where I couldn’t even get up for various reasons.  But I understand that in order to achieve what I’m seeking to achieve I need to do what I say I’m going to do.  It’s all on me. It’s all in my choices and actions and what I do or don’t get is a result of what I do or don’t follow through on.  That is the nature of taking responsibility for our lives.  We get what we put into it.  And for the first time, I have more clarity around that.  I have a better relationship with balance and scheduling and knowing what needs to be done.  I had this idea of what freedom is and what it means, thinking I could do whatever I wanted when I wanted to and I developed that into a routine a long time ago.  But freedom also means adapting to what needs to be done. It means finding the balance between what we need and what we want—and then finding the ground to do what has to be done while honoring all the other stuff.  The bottom line is if there is something that needs to be done, we need to be clear about it and do the work to get the work done.  All gets done when it is supposed to so we can trust that we are always on time.  All is exactly as it should be.

Today I am grateful for passion.  Passion can apply to a lot of things we experience and feel in this world.  The desire and drive to achieve something specific.  The joy we feel when we are in a certain environment or doing a certain task.  The way we feel about someone.  The way we feel about a goal.  Passion is what drives us in so many things.  Liz Gilbert wrote years ago about how we have to find our passion to secure our actions and figure out what our lives mean.  There is some truth to that, but she came back after a while essentially apologizing for it because the truth is there are some points where passion isn’t fully clear.  Passion can sometimes be an impulse and we aren’t always able to decide what direction we’re really being pulled in.  For me I became overwhelmed with passion because I am curious about a lot of things and I truly get interested in the process of learning and trying new things.  But with that I was never able to fully settle and become a master or expert on any one thing in particular.  I hated myself for that because I thought I had wasted all my time in this world trying to do everything.  I can look at this a little differently now and understand it wasn’t wasted time, it was time spent learning that there are many beautiful things in this world and having a broad knowledge of them can be a key to guiding others to what they want as well. Passion keeps me coming back to the things I love: writing, reading, sharing, learning.  It keeps me fulfilled.  Even if I’m not the wild success I thought I would be, I am still successful enough to be able to explore the world as I see fit and that is because passion keeps my eyes open for new things.  For that I am grateful.

Today I am grateful for relaxing.  I have a high guilt complex so I am often plagued with feeling like I should always be doing something else, like I should always be somewhere else.  I have a hard time being in the moment and really enjoying what I’m doing even if I love what I’m doing.  I automatically go to thinking that there is something else I should be doing.  The pressure of should takes the joy out of the present moment AND out of the things I should be doing—because if I’m really honest, the things I should be doing are all things I want to be doing as well.  Creating a divide and uncertainty in the focus of the moment is enough of an issue but when we throw guilt on that fire, it consumes all joy we could potentially have anyway.  So there are times we need to learn to relax.  Accept the moment as it is.  Accept the joy of the moment and trust divine timing in everything.  All that needs to get done will, it doesn’t all have to get done at once.  All is well.  So breathe and focus and enjoy the present.  We are here together and that is a gift. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead

Your brain not always your bestie.

Thought aren’t facts, stop believing every single one.

Fear, that’s your values waving at you.

Anxiety, you rehearsing a future that isn’t here yet.

Anger your boundaries have been crossed.

Sadness, your body asking you to rest, not give up.

You’re not broken, you do not need fixing, your nervous system is just trying to protect you.

Healing isn’t about bulldozing feelings, it’s learning to sit with them and not letting them drive the bus.

Change? Forget motivation, build habits instead, small shifts done often will quietly rewire your entire life.

Your past it’s a teacher, not a life sentence, stop giving it the pen when you are writing the next chapter.

Feeling triggered?  That’s a mirror,  What you judge in others is often what’s unhealed in you.

Control is an illusion, the only real power you have is your choice.  You’re the architect, your life, your design.

“Reminder: Life is hard either way.  Choose your difficult. Waking up early to work out is hard but so is feeling exhausted and unhealthy.  Having tough conversations to fix a relationship is difficult but so is living with resentment and distance.  Budgeting your money with discipline is hard but so is drowning in debt.  Putting yourself out there is hard and risking rejection and putting your work and heart on the line is hard but so is playing it safe and wondering what could have been.  Growth is hard but regret I would say it’s harder.  Every path has its pain so don’t ask for easy, ask for worth it.  You don’t get to skip difficult but you do get to decide what kind of difficult you live with.  The difference between people who grow and people who stay stuck, it’s not talent, it’s how they handle difficult,” Ryan Leak.  I know we’ve talked about this one before many times, but it is a pertinent reminder that we are in charge of our lives and the choices we make.  It isn’t necessarily about controlling that life because all plans can go awry at any time, but it is about making choices, even if they are difficult.  It is in the choosing, no matter how hard that we learn what we are made of.

If what I wrote a few weeks ago about the unicursal line is true, then it doesn’t matter what we choose because it will all be part of the same path that takes us to the same result no matter what we do.  Again, that has nothing to do with a doom and gloom type of fatalism, it has to do with taking the pressure off and understanding that there is no wrong choice because no matter the outcome, we are safe, and we can’t be anywhere other than where we are.  We can’t go back, we can’t go forward, we can only choose with the information we have now and we do our best.  There is nothing to regret or fear because it is all for a reason and we made the choice for a reason.  I noticed with regret, the only time we start to regret those choices is when we make the choices that we don’t truly believe in—or when we lose the opportunity to make the choice at all.  So make the choice and take the chance because if we have the opportunity now, it’s meant to happen now, we have the opportunity now so take it before we can’t.

No matter what we say, different is hard, but sometimes living the same thing over and over again knowing we had the chance to make a change is harder.  The things that replay in our minds, calling us, telling us they want to be awakened and expressed, the things we want to experience, the things that feel like home even if we haven’t been there or done that before—those are the things that will change us.  Those are the moments we understand what is important and we wouldn’t be afraid if it wasn’t important to us.  If it didn’t mater we wouldn’t worry about it.  What we’ve forgotten, however, is that the experience isn’t always contingent on the result—sometimes it’s about how we get there.  Sometimes we have to go through things a certain way to learn a specific lesson in how to get to the next step.  We have to experience it to understand what it is we really want.  And we have the choice at every turn to either commit and take the chance or to sit and wish for it.  The only way to get it done is to do it so we must always remember that no action is a choice as well.  But we can’t regret what we don’t choose anymore than what we do.  So sit with our hearts and listen to what it tells our minds/bodies/souls and we will know what choice to make no matter how difficult.  It will always be the right thing.

“How much of your life was performing, just fitting into a mold that just wasn’t you?  You know it’s a real awakening because you can’t go back to sleep, there’s a before and an after.  Keep asking every single question that comes to mind. You’re not going crazy, you’re becoming you,” Ross Lara.  This was probably my favorite quote from the entire reel Ross shared.  We are given a persona from the time we are born that we don’t even realize may not be who we are.  Some suspect there is something more or that the life they’re living isn’t quite a right fit—they just feel off.  And often that’s how this starts—with the subtle shift that something doesn’t feel right and that our actions aren’t matching what we feel.  When we see the alternatives and know that we are indeed meant for more, that mold cracks. Of course it feels like breaking and some of us fear that we will never be able to get it back together again—that’s entirely natural because we are trained that the mold is who we are and if that breaks then what else do we have?  What else defines us?  The reality is, when that mold breaks, it’s showing what is meant to be, what has always been inside, the pieces we’ve been trained to hide for one reason or another over the years.

We learn the difference is this process is more akin to shedding a skin than it is to breaking a vase.  This is the realization that we never fit in that vase and we were contorting ourselves to fit into an image someone else held for us based on their experience, and perhaps we don’t know ourselves as well as we thought we did.  Our lives aren’t meant to be spent twisting and flipping, becoming different people for different people.  When we experience the awakening and we actually wake up, we see that the mold we used as safety or as a definition of who we are, rather than it being a place of consistency and comfort, has become a coffin.  The things that used to feed us and make us tick no longer work or resonate.  In many ways it has become a parasite that feeds off us instead of giving us the sustenance we needed. That is awakening.  That is knowing who we are and knowing that we can’t go back.  If the mold is broken then there is nothing to go back to regardless.  What we were afraid of is the belief that we can’t survive outside of what we know even if we know there is something more—or perhaps even the idea that we CAN handle whatever comes next in spite of what anyone else thinks.

We’ve lived our lives asleep thinking we are awake because we are moving and conscious, but when we get that taste that there is something more and manage to get a peek underneath, it becomes that much harder to ignore.  As Ross says, there is the before and after.  The in between can get a little murky because that’s when it seems most bleak, but awakening is like shedding layers and if we keep going, eventually all the costumes we wore for the roles we’ve played come off.  The old no longer fits and we are no longer content to accept the role we had before—even if we willingly took it before.  Many people view this as some sort of crisis and say this is because we are changing and we don’t know ourselves anymore.  There may be some truth to that because we are indeed becoming a new person with a new perspective—but the crisis they speak of is the fact that they no longer know who they are to us and they don’t see us in our role anymore.  And that is ok.  We stay true, hold steady, and like Lara says, we keep questioning until there is nothing left to hide behind nor a desire to hide.  We welcome all we are with open arms and never look back.  So even if the show is over for one portion of our lives, the living begins. 

“The truth doesn’t need defending if it’s the truth; once you start asking questions the floodgates open,” Ross Lara.  Humans are curious creatures by nature.  It comes with the inherent creativity we were gifted and our ability to learn, adapt, understand, and modify the environment around us.  We have to be curious in order to see the possibilities and to learn.  This quote was a continuation of the discussion of awakening in the context of finding the answers to things we always questioned and a reminder to keep questioning.  We have brains capable of understanding all of human history and context, we were driven to record our history, our stories, to leave a mark and it is right to question everything we know because it is all based on what was told before us.  A majority was not through first hand experience—it was simply what we were told and accepted as true.  It wasn’t until we started to care about how we looked and started seeking power that we manipulated the truth.  I mean, with that being said, we started lying as soon as we realized we could hunt because the guy with the biggest kill had the most power.  But then it turned into a game of manipulation to make people behave a certain way so they would fulfill specific interests.  So when we understood that and started asking questions, that was an entirely different game.

Facts needed to line up and when things didn’t make sense, we started to ask about the cracks.  Some people didn’t like that because they didn’t like being questioned or exposed.  Then there were those who simply stuck with the truth because they knew it was the truth.  There are truths we form based on our experience and we can have a different story for the exact same thing, but when we look objectively, we understand that we don’t need to defend ourselves when we are in truth.  The story tells itself.  So if we see someone or feel someone trying to adjust a story that we know didn’t go down a certain way, it feels wrong.  If we feel like something someone shares with us doesn’t make sense, we feel it.  If we see something portrayed as truth that only benefits a few and hurts someone else, we know it’s wrong.  So we get curious and start digging because we know there is more to it.  That is one of the greatest gifts of being human: we have this knowing when there is more to the story. We have this little radar that senses crap. So what really matters is that we can tell whatever story we want to but the truth will always come out.  We don’t need to back it up or posture for it—it speaks for itself. 

It’s when we experience those moments of finding a truth that we start to see there could be cracks in everything we know.  If we could go our entire lives believing and behaving based on one type of system only to find out there was an entirely different series of rules for others, then what else is there?  An infinite amount of possibility.  And we know that humans have a tendency to fight for being right rather than doing what is right.  Before anyone gets too upset at that, I’m NOT saying that is the norm—I know there are people who genuinely care and are honest and consistently act in the best interest of others simply for the fact it is the right thing to do.  But there are people who care more about being right than doing what is right, that is a fact we can’t escape.  So this is where the distinction is and the lesson in this piece: remember that we know the difference between right and wrong, that is something we were all born with.  If something feels off, allow that curiosity to guide is in the direction of what feels right and we will find the answer.  The truth can never stay buried for long because it has its own light about it.  It doesn’t need the glory of any sort of attention: it is exactly as it needs to be.  So trust our instincts and keep searching for what feels right.

“A spiritual awakening isn’t becoming religious.  It’s when you start questioning everything you’ve been taught. The beliefs you were handed, the systems you were raised in, the masks you had to wear to survive, the rules you had to follow just to be accepted,” Ross Lara.  The one good thing about everyone having a platform is that we are exposed to so many different viewpoints, talents, beliefs, ideas, and creative outlets.  We learn different ways of life.  We see that there may be cracks in what we were taught and there are other ways to not only survive, but thrive.  We learn to make the connections that really matter.  The connection to source and self.  That isn’t something religion can even teach us regardless.  Connecting to spirit means being willing to give up familiarity and comfort. 

Humans were designed to question.  We were given creativity and connection and thought and we are most definitely meant to use it.  The truth is there are no rules beyond what we make and sometimes we are the ones keeping ourselves in the cage.  We are given the spiritual awakening so we can unearth something new within us, something new to believe, something new to share.  Religion has nothing to do with it—religion is just another structure designed to keep people in line.  Spirituality—now that is where the meat is.  When we connect to spirit, that’s when we know real truth.  We don’t have to survive in truth, we simply are.  Welcome what we know and watch the entire game change.  It may feel a lot like falling apart, but it is the beginning of creation and the opening of the world.

To be fair, there doesn’t NEED to be a spiritual component to it, that’s just the context I’m most familiar with because my own awakening/epiphanies did have a lot to do with connection and spirituality.  But it doesn’t have to play out like that for anyone.  It can be a realization that we need to break a bad habit, an understanding of a long held concept, creating a new belief.  Awakening is anything that brings us out of our shell and into something new, something greater.  It’s the shifting from what we knew to what we WILL know through shedding what we carried.  That isn’t to say we let it all go, but it is saying that we let go of what no longer works in favor of something that fits better.  If we know there is something greater for us, the awakening will bring us right to it.  We just have to let it happen and then we move from survive to thrive in an entirely new way, with eyes wide open.  Ready. 

“Anxiety and trauma impair decision making.  The fear of making the wrong choice creates analysis paralysis.  The feeling of being stuck is not a character flaw.  It’s cognitive overload.  When someone feels stuck, and I’ve done this to myself, they often blame it on their own weakness, their own laziness, or emotional instability, but the truth is stuck-ness is usually just the result of too many competing internal demands.  Your brain isn’t broken, it’s overwhelmed. Cognitive overload happens when your brain’s working memory is trying to juggle too much at once. Emotionally, mentally, or even physically.  I know you understand because your brain is going a thousand miles per hour and keeps you stuck in a situation.  A 2011 study published in Psychological Science shows high emotional stress impairs the pre-fontal cortex, the part responsible for decision making, planning, and impulse control. When overwhelmed emotionally, clarity is neurologically blocked.  What triggers emotional overwhelm is stacked unresolved emotions, lack of boundaries, neglecting basic physical needs, unmet needs for safety and validation, overintellectualizing instead of feeling, and toxic relationships that keep you in a state of hypervigilance,” JB Copeland. 

Recently there’s been an influx of information shared about the nervous system and regulating it.  The goal is to create understanding around body function and how we can work with our nervous systems to regulate and make better choices.  It explains how our body is wired and the things we do either help or hinder it—and how we can get back to a neutral state to better make decisions.  We live in a society that is always on, always moving, always striving, always proving, always trying to make sense of something.  The human mind and body aren’t designed to function like that.  We need the ebbs and flows, the on and the off so we can recharge.  We make each other feel like we are weak if we somehow can’t keep up with an impossible expectation of doing it all.  Even when we don’t know what doing it all means.  We put ourselves into a state of anxiety where we can’t make logical decisions only to be taught to blame ourselves for not functioning in a way we weren’t designed to function in the first place.  Overwhelm is a dangerous thing.  Multiple drives, directives, desires pull people in multiple directions and we can’t focus. And we make ourselves sick.

We need to understand that mental health is synonymous with self-regulation and awareness.  It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with us, it means we are trying to function in a system not designed for us.  We put too much on our plates and are critical of ourselves and then put more and more on there until we are buried and have no way out.  It’s important to slow down for our sanity and for our actual function.  We need to change the story around the premise that we are supposed to be in constant motion, always doing, always productive.  If we don’t address the root cause of that overwhelm we will constantly find ourselves in that state, unable to move.  Don’t mistake what I’m saying—we are indeed meant to move, we just aren’t meant to move how we do now.  Slow down, take it all in, breathe.  The better we take care of ourselves the better we can make decisions.  So move, flow, don’t force—and in that context it has nothing to do with attracting—it just has to do with getting on track, our own track.