“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it,” Maya Angelou.  This is a little reminder to keep true to yourself.  As we work on changing and upgrading our mindset, it becomes more and more important to interact with our true selves and learn what we want/need.  We need to trade the ideas of what we thought we needed for what we actually need and we also need to redefine what success means and looks like.  We need to start considering what it feels like.  If you’re miserable sitting in your mansion, then that level of arguable monetary success means nothing.  It’s a false symbol of success because it is taking something from you rather than contributing to you and your purpose.  Real success looks and feels good.  It’s about the freedom to live your life how you want to live it and how freely you are able to share and contribute your gift.  More importantly, it’s about feeling good doing what you do.  We’ve been trained to forget that.

Most of our time is spent doing things on other people’s behalf whether it is working for a corporation, taking care of our families, meeting social obligations that stretch our dollars, and trying to keep up appearances with those around us.  I’m telling you now, if you don’t like any facet of that, it’s a waste of time.  You can never find your purpose, your calling if you are putting on airs and being something you’re not.  You aren’t living your purpose if you’re living for someone else’s validation or to their expectations.  This requires deep work and the ability to let go of what others tell you to do.  It requires knowing what you need and the strength to see that through.  It also requires blinders and ear plugs because others will try to pull you back in at all costs. 

Finding yourself and honoring who that is can be a lonely and even stressful path in the beginning.  The people we love and who we thought supported us come out as only supporting the version of ourselves that served them.  There are people who simply won’t understand these new parts of you.  But in order to move forward, you need to put that aside and step into the authentic version of you.  All of this starts with what we talked about yesterday—recognizing stressors in our life and getting rid of it.  I’m not talking about the positive stressors in life such as overcoming the obstacles toward reaching a goal we are actively seeking.  I’m talking about the distress, the stress that drains us and feels heavy.  The things we want to avoid but feel we have to attend or are responsible for. 

So going back to what success looks like.  I’m learning as I do more research and practice more in my own life, that it isn’t so much about look.  It’s about feel.  Quite simply it’s about what feels good to us and yes, I’m talking about physically feeling good as well as mentally.  No one can tell you what that means to you.  You have to be in touch with yourself enough to know what that means to you.  Some people find joy in running, others find joy in reading, others find joy in meditation or gardening.  The key is what brings you that joy—that’s an indicator it’s something that feels good.  The other key is asking yourself what task do you take on willingly that absorbs you, that excites you, that doesn’t feel like work no matter how much you do it.  Those are good indicators those are things that fulfill your purpose and you should continue to steward your life in that direction.  When you can say you’re proud of what you’ve done and you are content with what you did and how you got there, then you’re a success.

“Stress is making us sick, stupid, and slow,” Emily Fletcher.  What better way to add to our discussion on anxiety than to talk the actual science for a minute.  On a basic level the body is in constant flux with different chemicals (hormones) being released from specific organs and flooding the brain which then interprets what’s happening.  Stress is no exception.  We have a very real, physical reaction when it comes to the things we feel and this is why different self-help guides talk about the importance of emotional control.  Beyond the social component of maintaining composure, there is the physical element of protecting your mind and body so you can determine what is actually happening around you versus your perception of it. 

The human mind and body are not designed to function under constant stress and in an age of 24/7 stimulation and drive, we are lowering our capacity for patience, broader outlook, and our health.  We have so firmly engrained the pattern of constant connectivity in the last two decades that people can’t be without their phones, TVs, tablets, computers—any source of “connection”.  While we’ve closed the distance around the world, we’ve created a gorge in connection—connection with those present, connection with nature, connection with spirit, connection with ourselves.  We’ve taken a beautiful tool, a luxury, and have idolatrized it into necessity.  We’ve created such importance around it that we’ve lost sight of what’s right in front of us.  We’ve willingly injected the electronic addiction into our lives.  Again, I’m not saying that we don’t need it—we absolutely do.  But our interpretation of HOW we need it and HOW we use it have greatly skewed. 

Additionally, we have the addiction of approval, the addiction of belief, the addiction of pleasing, the addiction of fulfillment of a specific dream.  “Addiction is defined as a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences.  People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences,”  asam.org.  And yes, any one of the behaviors listed above can be addictive.  We have found an external source of stimuli and validation and we feel we need it.  We feel there is no other way.  People can even be addicted to stress.  The rush they get from constantly being needed or constantly being on the move.  But what is it doing to our minds and bodies?  Cue Emily Fletcher.

So while we feel these things are necessary and we use them to satiate things like anxiety and depression (even though it only adds to anxious and depressive thoughts), they are taking their toll on us mentally and physically.  We lose reaction time and the ability to process information.  Stress hormones put extra strain on our bodies through weight gain (cortisol) and over production of the adrenals (adrenaline).  Too much of those things in your body leads to issues with the thyroid, the pituitary, the heart, the lungs, and the brain—and that is only an example from two hormones.  It has an impact on reproductive hormones and muscular response as well.  EVERYTHING is connected.  Spending too much time in anything can prove detrimental to us, and again, stress is no exception. 

The overall key here is to not allow yourself to fall into these patterns and that means paying attention to recognize when you are leaning toward stress over presence.  Check in often.  So many of us (myself included) waste too much time finding ways to stress ourselves out.  We do things that don’t light us up because we are under the impression we have to.  We misalign with our true purpose and trade it for what we think we need.  I’m not talking about being uncomfortable or trying new things, I’m talking about repeating the same pattern continually in spite of knowing it isn’t what is needed.  Please don’t discount the impact that has on your entire body. When you feel stress, pause and ask what your body is telling you.  Don’t allow it to overwhelm, but hear what it has to say and then align with your center.  It takes tremendous courage to break those habits and get out of the routine we think is normal.  We need to stand up for ourselves and do what works for us.  Disconnect with the rush of the world and center in who you are.  You will feel better immediately.

I’ve shared so much about my experience with anxiety and it is something I’ve faced my entire life and I still face it.  I’ve learned that talking through it is incredibly helpful.  We are not alone by any means.  When I came across these quotes, I felt a sense of peace with this new perspective.  It makes so much sense.  Notice that as we’ve gone through these posts, we’ve discussed over and over again the friction of anxiety.  What is friction?  It’s opposing energies, creating heat and discomfort and expansion in areas that can’t hold it.  Friction in general hurts—We know what it feels like when something is too tight or when it isn’t moving properly.  When we don’t have space we feel choked—and we all know nothing grows when it’s choked.  If I really think of my anxiety and the pressure I felt in these terms, it was the discomfort of trying to make everything fit in my life.  It was trying to be in multiple places at once, putting too much stuff in a small space.  The anxiety was caused by not accepting what IS, always wanting to be somewhere else. In essence, we are always in opposing worlds and we always have something in conflict with our knowing or our needs.  We tell those things to be quiet because we have other things we believe we need to do.

Simply put, conflict causes anxiety.  Conflict between what we know and what we feel and what we are told we are supposed to do.  Conflict between doing what is right for us versus what is right for others.  Conflict between temporary disappointment and long term gain.  Everything we think should be a certain way and the reality of how it is.  Expectation causes conflict.  As soon as something doesn’t turn out exactly as we think it should, we feel let down.  We need to start looking at creating harmony in the mind.  And that happens when we accept the reality of what is.  Putting pressure on ourselves to be something else or be somewhere else in our journey doesn’t work.  If we aren’t there, we aren’t there and allowing the frustration or anger to develop into anxiety isn’t going to change that position. 

I’m looking at these quotes every day now.  The moments I feel the anxiety creeping in, I ask what friction is there in that moment.  I’m asking what needs to change to allow me to be where I am.  And if I really can’t tolerate where I’m at, how can I step toward where I need to be.  Over and over again I’m reminding myself that this is my life, this is my one shot and I can’t afford to waste time hoping for someone’s approval or permission to do what I want to do.  I don’t have time for conflict.  I don’t have time to guess what someone else wants or to make myself palatable or acceptable to anyone anymore.  I want to help people and if I’m not your flavor, then there is someone else who is.  That is the grand reckoning with anxiety: accepting yourself sometimes means others won’t.  And the peace of that is you don’t need their acceptance anyway.  Don’t create conflict in your life for the peace of someone who doesn’t even know you. 

I hope this series has allowed some new perspective specifically in that regard.  You aren’t here for anyone else’s convenience or peace or to make them feel a certain way about you.  You are here to love yourself wholly and put your talents to use for the good of all.  Your talent as it is, is enough and it is needed because the ripple effect it creates allows space for others to do the same.  Remember who you are.  Don’t allow anxiety to lie to you any longer.  Break it down to its simplest pieces and become who you are meant to be.  Take one step at a time and look at what is causing the anxiety in the moment.  If you can answer that, you can break free.  Listen to that guidance system—remember.    

“Sometimes anxiety is the friction caused by your heart saying, ‘I need you to stop holding back.  I’m ready to open up again,’” Xavier Dagba.  This is my favorite piece.  This is the last piece of the puzzle.  All the things you’ve used to protect yourself for all of those years, all the proving, all the worry, all the fighting can lay in ash around you as you become exactly who you are. This is when you rise up from the ash of what you’ve allowed to burn.   All of that requires an immense opening and allowing for the universe to enter us.  It’s the allowing of who we are to be reflected back to the world.  We aren’t meant to be caged.  We aren’t here to perform for others.  We aren’t here to put on the same show that has been playing for millennia.  We are here with our own intuition, values, love, creativity, hope and all of that needs to be shared with the world.  The heart doesn’t want to be closed.  It doesn’t operate under constriction.  It operates with flow and excitement.  So allow yourself to hear and feel the beat: that is purpose.

Learning to give over to it and follow what it’s telling you is all we are meant to do.  We are born worthy.  We don’t need to prove anything.  Again, that isn’t a lesson we are taught.  We are shown that we need to be accepted in order to move forward.  We are shown that we all have to be the same because that is safe and normal.  We are taught to pull our punches because someone else may be more deserving than we are and we certainly can’t shine our full light on the world because it’s too bright.  We’ve been taught to dim everything, so when the slightest beacon shines through, it’s too much for us.  Ironically we are naturally drawn to people showing their best selves, their authentic selves.  Who doesn’t watch some type of rags to riches reality/competition show?  So why do we hide our own authenticity?  Even if that best version isn’t what the world is ready for, it’s about how you feel.  The world will eventually catch up.

All our innate nature wants is full expression.  Our purpose wants to be fulfilled.  We want to feel happy doing what we are meant to do—we are literally drawn to it every day.  When we depress that portion of ourselves, we feel…you guessed it….depressed.  We learn to be happy by listening to our hearts and souls and learning to trust what it’s telling us.  Let it out.  Don’t hold anything back.  When you don’t allow your full expression to release, it’s like driving a car with your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time.  You’ll keep moving, but you’re going to wear out quickly and you will never find the right rhythm.  You will never find the flow.  Here is the greatest secret we were never taught: there is no need to hold yourself back. It is that simple and that difficult.  For those who feel others are too much, I am sorry you don’t feel enough love and security for yourself to express that same level of self.  Let’s work on that.

We are born with a beautiful guidance system between our heart, our mind, our nerves, and our soul.  All the information we need for our journey is there including what we are meant to do and how to navigate what doesn’t feel right as well as what does.  We are here to remember that guidance system.  As I get in touch with mine and learn to hear exactly what it’s saying, I’m amazed how willingly we give it up.  I mean, I know as a child I practically slashed it to bits in favor of listening to those around me.  I craved freedom to do what I wanted as a reward for doing exactly as I was told.  I kept waiting and waiting for the results I wanted to come—and they never did.  It hasn’t been until very recently and well into adulthood that my eyes opened to the possibility I could take control of my destiny.  And I realized that those people “guiding” me didn’t have the same interests, heart, or goals that I did.  I could no longer prioritize their goals over my own and no one was coming to help me with what I wanted to do. 

It actually was subtle for me at first.  I began to get frustrated repeating the same day over and over.  Then bored.  Then annoyed.  Then angry because no matter what I did to break things up, it was still always the same thing.  Then I started doing some work and looking at my conditioning.  I began to make space for the things I enjoyed doing—and I’m still finding ways to make more time for those things.  It has only recently been that things are taking off and that is because My heart began to SCREAM that it didn’t want to be held back anymore and my soul joined in.  The more I didn’t do what I wanted to do, the more uncomfortable and anxious I felt, and based on what I was reading, I remembered my nature and knew this was distinctly what was described: I wasn’t allowing myself to be who I was meant to be.  So I make efforts every day to get a little bit closer. This is a journey and I know I will continue to find ways to get closer to myself every day until the day comes I am fully me.  Listen to your heart and get closer to who you’re meant to be.

Today I am grateful for honesty and understanding.  I have goals that I’m working diligently to achieve and to some, it may look like a hobby.  But I’m serious about seeing these things through.  Today as I sat and worked on some projects I have for the upcoming week, my husband asked if I wanted him to leave the room.  Normally I say no because I enjoy sitting and talking with him in my office in the morning.  But I know the more I allow my work to be treated as a hobby, the more people are going to look at it as a hobby.  So I agreed and told him this is a super creative time for me and I like to get my thoughts down early in the morning.  He didn’t take any offense to it and he let me get some work done.    

Today I am grateful for clarity and planning the future.  I’ve always been a control freak—and yes we could go into the deep seated psychological issues with it, but it’s a matter of misguided direction in getting what I want/fulfilling my purpose.  With that, it is also an attempt at controlling the wrong things, and the focus on the issue being off.  There comes a time when you’re working toward a goal that you need to remember your focus.  Take your hands off the wheel of the external bs that you have 0 control over and turn inward.  That is where you can take your steps and exert your control.  You have 100% control over the mind and your reactions and how to navigate this life.  You have no say in how others do the same.  So if there is something you want, let go of the attempt to control outside circumstances and work on yourself.

Today I am grateful for connection to self.  I’ve spent the last year working on huge projects.  I’m absolutely blessed to be part of it and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to bring this to my family.  That doesn’t change that it has been a ton of work and it’s exhausting.  In order to get the things we want we have to know where we’re going and I’ve had to make some difficult choices and sacrifices over the last year.  Now as I’m seeing where I’ve made progress (and where I haven’t), I know I need to make some additional choices.  I need to work in a way that functions with my life and my family and find a way to make things work and that means spending time in a way that is conducive to both worlds.  I’m learning to say no where I need to and I’m learning to say yes to what feels right.  That has been a challenge for me because I feel guilty and like I’m letting people down.  But there are times I have to and I can say I’ve been on more than not, so I’m taking a breather for myself.

Today I am grateful for life.  My son lost his first tooth today and I’m dealing with the passing of time—again.  But I am so grateful to be able to witness it and I am thrilled he is growing on a healthy track and becoming such a grown up.  I struggle that he is my only child so all of these firsts are also the last—I spoke about that a few weeks ago when he started school.  We can never guarantee how much time we have and it is so important to be in the moment and appreciate what we have while we have it.  Life is a gift and that is a gross over simplification of the magic we are allowed to partake in while we are here.  We are all living, breathing, miracles and it pains me to think of the time that is gone but I am beyond grateful for what we have coming. 

Today I am grateful for some peace of mind and communication.  I’ve struggled the last few weeks with what to do—what to do with work, my relationships, my career, my family, where I see myself, defining how I want to impact and help people.  I’ve blamed my husband because of his lack of vision and his lack of commitment to what he wants the future to look like.  I’ve blamed myself for thinking we need to repeat the same patterns and being so demanding of answers from everyone.  I’ve blamed being impatient and indecisive.  Overall, I’ve just been crab-tastic.  But today, I sat with my husband and clearly told him how important it is for me that we develop a vision of what we want for our future.  We can’t continue aiming blindly and hoping it will hit something we like.  While we hardly scratched the surface, it felt good to communicate and share the importance of the decision we have to make and the actions. 

Today I am grateful for presence.  With the struggles I’ve mentioned above, being crabby, getting emotional about time again, and frustrated with lack of clarity, I realized the importance of slowing down and getting my bearings.  It’s advice I’ve often shared here.  And it is important to take the time to figure out where you’re at so you can determine where you’re going.  That requires diligence, honesty, and awareness of self.  It means paying attention to how you’re feeling.  Today I took the time to figure that out.  I knew I needed clarity, I knew I needed to stop blaming others, and I knew that I needed to find the discipline within myself to commit to what I want.  I needed to come back to my body and hear what I actually needed: movement, rest, and self-care.  I just needed to get out of my head and de-escalate from the constant state of doing and needed a deep breath and some patience to HEAR instead of talk.   

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“Sometimes anxiety is the friction caused by your unwillingness to surrender to the knowingness of your heart,” Xavier Dagba.  This one gave me pause for a minute.  Trying to find the distinction between the knowingness of the heart and your intuition or your values is such a fine line.  Because the knowingness of your heart is exactly where intuition and value come from.  But I realized the key in this phrasing is the “unwillingness to surrender.”  As animals we are taught to constantly fight.  We are primed for it all the time whether it is defending our opinions or fighting for our children.  We are taught to be on guard all the time.  We are also grossly misinformed about surrender.  We look at the word and immediately assume it means give in.  Ego doesn’t take that well because ego likes to be right.  We also don’t take it well because that means giving up on what we think we’re obligated to defend.  Who knows, maybe that’s ego too. 

I’m not a fan of surrender.  I’m definitely guilty of the, “I got this,” syndrome only to find myself drowning more often than not.  I’m also guilty of the desire to prove that I can handle anything.  I hate when people see me and assume I’m physically weak, or because I look younger than I am that I’m actually younger than I am.  So I find myself trying to prove something every day and it’s become such a habit at this point that it’s engrained.  I do it without even realizing it.  But as I’m getting older, and I’m taking the time to listen to my heart more, and to trust my intuition more, I’m slowly letting go of the idea that other people’s opinions matter.  Of course I KNOW that, but my mind hasn’t caught up with it yet.  So.  For those reasons, I struggle to let go and just do what works for me because I don’t want people to think I’m a certain way.  But I had to ask myself what happens when I allow myself to fully embrace who I am?  That’s when the magic happens. 

When we give into who we really are and embrace our path, that is a form of surrender.  When we give up the façade of who we were taught to be and become who we are, that is surrender.  When we decide to listen and ACT on what we know, the full power of who we are is unleashed and shared with the world.  And we have to remember that just because things don’t go the way we want them to, that doesn’t mean something better isn’t in the works.  It also doesn’t mean that we won’t eventually get what we want.  Sometimes we just take the long way.  Gabby Bernstein says that surrender isn’t giving up, it’s giving over.  It’s giving over to the idea that there is another way.  It’s giving over to the idea that things are possible even when we can’t see them.  It’s giving over to the idea that we don’t know best and in some circumstances we aren’t meant to.  The times our plans align creates flow.  When they don’t align, we can choose to fight it or we can choose to go with it.

Don’t confuse what your heart KNOWS with what your mind knows.  Our mind works on perception and interpretation.  It can lie to us.  It can create false beliefs if we let it.  Our heart works on intuition and connection with spirit/universe/the divine etc.  So when we learn to listen to our heart, we are learning to hear what the universe has to say.  That can’t be wrong.  All of our training isn’t designed to serve us, it’s designed to serve the system.  So who benefits from you not listening to your own soul?  Everyone else.  This life is about service, not necessarily sacrifice.  It’s about supplying your gift to the world and creating light and hope.  It’s not about giving up who you are in order to say you did what you were told.  We are meant to create and in order to do that we need our connection with the divine.  It’s ok to give in.  It’s ok to surrender.  It isn’t weak.  It often takes the greatest strength to step into who you are.  The more practice you have with listening to your knowing and aligning with your integrity, the easier it is to surrender and give over to your heart.  The answers are always there—we just need to clear the air to hear them. 

“Sometimes anxiety is your value system saying: ‘There are too many areas of your life where you are out of integrity.  I need you to realign with your values and take care of unfinished business,’” Xavier Dagba.  This is the case of living in two worlds epitomized.  We feel what we want and we are starting to listen to our knowing, but we haven’t let go of what we used to do because we still need it.  This is where we are truly tested because we are ready to take the leap but many of us are often scared about what happens once we do.  We don’t see the answers or the way on the new side yet.  There is a simpler way to look at this as well: we say we want something but we don’t do what it takes to get it.  We haven’t learned to live in alignment yet.  Going back to the precipice I mentioned the other day is another valid example here.  It is very true that once we take certain leaps we can’t undo it.  But the waiting and the in between causes more harm than making a choice.

Value is a personal decision.  We are taught values from the instant we are born.  We are taught what is worthy and noble and what our lives should be.  Not once do we learn to value independent thought.  We are even trained that we need guidance.  Now, there is a level of truth to it, but we don’t need to rely on the guidance of man.  We need to be taught to rely on the guidance of our connection with source.  People can absolutely be a conduit for that and share messages through their experience.  That is divine work.  But someone who comes along claiming to know all the answers is usually more of a red flag than not.  What we need is a connection with our intuition because that baby will tell you exactly what’s important to you.  It will tell you the exact direction of your compass.  What happens when your compass is trying to center?  It can’t tell the direction because it’s spinning all over the place.  Same with your values compared to action: you don’t head in any one direction because you’re torn and trying to go in a million directions at once. 

I don’t know if it’s optimism or ego or foolishness or hopefulness, but sometimes we feel we can do it all.  I know I bite off more than I can chew all the time because I KNOW I can do it.  But then I can’t.  I get overwhelmed, things come up, projects are left lying aside in a big old mess.  And then I start loathing myself.  Why didn’t I finish another project?  Why did I take it on?  Why didn’t I plan it better?  Yes, there is some truth to that—we should only take on what we can reasonably do well.  But there are some efforts of people pleasing, and there are other expectations so we ignore what we know we can handle and we end up taking it all on.  Those are your values in conflict with what you know.  It’s exhausting. 

The recommendation is to pause and take a beat to re-evaluate what you’re doing.  Take stock of all the open tasks so to speak and start asking yourself what really needs work.  What really needs to be finished and when.  That’s when you start seeing what’s important to you.  If it’s something you wouldn’t do in, or for five years, then don’t waste your time on it now.  If it takes the place of something important in your life in favor of someone else’s, it’s time to put it down.  If you won’t have the opportunity again and it’s calling to you, do it now.  And the hardest one: if it’s something that really is valuable to you and means the world to you, opens an experience you’ve been looking forward to but you have to decide if someone else will approve, go do it.  Don’t worry about letting anyone else down.  Worry about the chances you’re limiting in your life because of what you think someone else will do/say/think.  This is about your value and integrity and designing the life you want.  The more you align with that, the less anxiety you feel—and only you can determine that.

“Sometimes anxiety is your nervous system saying: ‘I need you to rebalance me, go slow, reconnect to the body and listen to its needs,’” Xavier Dagba.  In this society we are trained to move and compete at an alarming, and quite frankly, disgusting rate.  Our body, minds, souls, our heart, our hormones, and our nervous system are NOT designed to be under that kind of undue stress for any length of time—it’s all fake shit anyway.  All of the stressors we have aside from actual physical issues or natural disasters are completely within our control and often times made up.  And even fi they are not, it is our choice to continue to deal with them. I had a lot of trouble (and still have a lot of trouble) wrapping my head around that one.  But it’s the truth.  If your work environment sucks, you are able to get another job.  If your partner isn’t holding up their end of the bargain by choice, then you can leave.  We can choose to ignore the news and media and decide to do something good with our time. 

But we are trained to believe that it is normal to run at top speed thinking about the sky falling all the time.  The irony is we are a species that was literally hunted by other animals at one point.  Those people knew what it meant to fear for your life because danger could literally be around ANY corner.  We still carry that with us and we behave as if the next comment on social media is going to kill us meanwhile we don’t even look up from the damn phone when we are crossing the street.  Do we not see how ridiculous this is?  We are told we have to take on and do as much as we can and work all the time in order to be worthy.  The truth is we do that so we continue to feed a system of consumerism driven by greed and hate and it fuels our fire to be witnessed and seen by others by pretending we have a voice.  It really isn’t about consuming anything anymore.  It’s about honoring what we can produce. 

So when we slow down enough to understand what’s happening, we see that we don’t need to run our lives like that.  We are worthy and our gifts were designed to carry and care for us.  We weren’t meant to monetize and devalue our gifts, we were simply meant to share them with each other and make each other better.  I mean, money is completely useless, it is a man-made thing.  And all of this nonsense around our country lately with inflation and recession is completely designed to induce further dependence on the system—that doesn’t work.  If we were really for each other, the government would put a ban on raising prices right now.  It’s like a bunch of children trying to compete for the most attention.  Again, another made up stressor designed to keep us feeding into the system so we pretend “they” have an answer.  We DON’T need it.

So for this one, I encourage you to really take a listen to what your body is telling you. If you slow down just a little, you’d be amazed at what you hear.  You don’t need to go all the time.  I know I can’t stand it.  I hate wasting my time on things that ultimately have no value because I’m told that it is the only way to be of value.  Meanwhile I face being replaced at the drop of hat if I don’t do everything in line.  If the purpose of business is to take care of people we have to meet them where they actually need us, not where we think they are.  We have to listen and identify where things are changing and there has been a MASSIVE shift over the last three years telling us where our priorities are changing.  No one wants to do the typical gig anymore.  They want freedom.  They don’t want to ask for permission to live their lives, to use their time with their families.  They don’t want to ask when it’s ok to eat or go to the bathroom.  We are fully grown adults.  I don’t need that added stress in my life, and neither do you.  Learn to hear what your body is telling you and let go of the rush, the pressure, the fear.  Settle, and hear.

“Sometimes anxiety is the friction caused by your intuition saying more loudly: ‘I need you to pay attention,’” Xavier Dagba.  This is a great follow up to shadow because this is the direct result of learning to ignore our intuition—it creates that shadow, our knowing that we repressed and hid in the shadows thinking they were bad.  We need to get in touch with our inner knowing, and when we reconcile the shadow, we understand that voice we’ve heard all along has simply been asking us to pay attention and honor it.  It wants us to know it’s safe to follow it.  We tend to treat our intuition like someone in a white van trying to lure us.  “Hey, I know all the answers, if you just let go and come over here for a minute, quiet the mind, you’ll hear it!” “Uh, no thanks, I have things to do!”  Buries face in phone and moves on.  Why?  Why are we taught our knowing is a bad thing.  Oh, right—something we don’t have time to examine in this post—if we find our knowing then we no longer are interested in mass consumerism and the broken system we have today!!!  Everyone else benefits from us ignoring our intuition.

Honestly, following intuition is a scary thing the first few times, especially as an adult.  When we are kids learning to crawl and walk, or we hear our parents telling us to not jump from the rocks or not go across the street but we KNOW we can do it, those are the first signs of intuition.  Granted those are moments of parents ensuring safety, but the point is you KNEW you’d be ok regardless of your mom screaming at you to stop.  We learn to doubt and overthink the steps we take.  We learn to not trust our knowing.  This training goes on for most of our lives.  We are taught what to think, what goals to have by those around us, what path to take, what patterns to repeat, what success looks like, what to eat.  And most destructively, we are taught that if we don’t follow those things, we are WRONG.  Anything against the grain or outside what is accepted as the norm is wrong.  Cue instant self-hatred and misconstrued beliefs that our being is wrong.

There are those of us who are fortunate enough to start HEARING.  Sometimes that hearing starts as a feeling, where we can’t quite put our fingers on it but we feel something is off about what we are doing.  We know the patterns we repeat every day are no longer serving or they lose their feeling of power over us.  Sometimes that starts with a simple, “I don’t want to do this today.”  Soon that escalates into, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”  Yes, THAT is intuition.  The scary part comes when there is no additional insight into what you DO want to do.  But that is the beauty of getting in touch with our knowing: we are supposed to try things and have fun.  I spent a HUGE majority of my life doing exactly what I was told, expecting the promised results only to never get them.  That left me wanting and questioning a ton of things.  Resentful, too.  As good as I was at doing what I was told, I always had another side, another inkling of things I wanted to create.  I tried getting through the “have-to” as quickly as I could so I had time for the “want to.”  As a late teen and early adult, I never realized that too was my intuition speaking.  If I have to rush through the “obligations” to get to do what I want to do, then I’m spending my time incorrectly.  Maybe that is a wake up for you as well.

So this is a precipice that I’m standing on personally now.  I know what I want next.  I know what isn’t working for me any longer.  But I haven’t quite jumped into the other side yet.  The tracks are getting wider and wider and I know soon I won’t be able to straddle both sides: I’m going to have to make a decision.  You will, too.  You can always ignore what you KNOW and go along with what you are comfortable with.  You can always go back to what you do every day and be content with that (or be miserable with it).  Or. You can take the chance and start hearing what you’re intuition has been trying to tell you all along.  I’ve taken a long look behind the curtain and I have been gifted with some insight into what is on the other side: pure freaking magic.  I have seen the creations and the flow that comes from following it and that looks like pure freedom.  The goal of life isn’t to chain ourselves to one way of thought or one pattern.  It is to learn what works for us and to create the life we are meant to have. So pay attention.  Hear it.  And when you are ready, follow it.

“Sometimes anxiety is the friction caused by your shadow saying: ‘I can no longer contain the light you repressed here decades ago.  It’s time to claim it all.’” Xavier Dagba.  So often we look at shadow as a negative thing.  Something that consumes the light, something dark.  But what if the shadow is the tool we use to dim the light that already exists because we are afraid of being seen? What if we use the shadow as a tool to make ourselves more palatable to other people?  What if the shadow is merely the hopes/things we wanted to do but were told were too crazy so we covered it, dimmed it down?  What if the shadow makes so much noise and seems so terrifying because it contains all the energy we hoped it would and it doesn’t know how to handle it?

The shadow becomes all of he things we reject about ourselves whether it is because we are told to reject them or because we fear we won’t be accepted.  If we self-reject, it somehow seems less painful to us in the moment.  But the mind doesn’t know that, it categorizes it all the same.  It’s a piece of us that can’t be shown and we learn to develop shame around it.  And then it turns into this monster thing that we can’t ignore, that we try to run from.  The reality is, it becomes a ten ton weight we drag around that is simply waiting to be acknowledged. It’s part of us and we are taught that we can compartmentalize and reject what we think is negative when really it is waiting to be integrated into our lives.  

Shadow isn’t a bad thing.  It is often the reflection of what we need most in our lives, and we are often too afraid to share that.  We are taught to deny our own needs, to ignore what we know our instincts are telling us for fear of rejection.  So all of what we know is blanketed in this dark cloud because we are taught that’s how it has to be instead of embracing what it really is: the very essence of who we are.  Truth be told, it could be beneficial to deny our needs if it truly served the greater good or if we were allowed another outlet, if we weren’t taught that we need to give up who we are to get anywhere—or if we were taught the value of helping others—instead we are guilted into feeding the machine because we are told it will help others.  It is again a conflict in what we know ad feel versus what we are told.

Our opening quote today is a reminder that we need to make peace with our shadows.  They don’t need to be baggage—we can leave parts behind and honor what we truly are.  I love this because the shadow is destroyed by light and that light is needed to guide our way forward.  How beautiful is it that the very remedy to what we need to progress in life is already within our grasp?  We simply need to let it out.  Allow the light to shine.  Forget what we are told or what we think people think.  AT the end of the day it doesn’t matter regardless.  It is time for all of us to make peace with the gifts we are given and accept them as such.  Don’t let anyone tell you the gifts you innately possess are bad.  Allow them to light the way for others who see you for all you are.