I saw a video of a viral reel the other day and it was about what happens when you hug your dog for too long.  I’m a sucker for animals so this was right up my alley.  Watching the video, I saw this animal completely relax into its human’s arms and even close its eyes and even lean its head against hers.  First of all, beyond adorable.  Secondly, animals are the best—they just KNOW.  Thirdly, why do we make it harder than this?  That is the purpose of life right there.  LOVE.  That is the answer.  Yes, we search and search for meaning and purpose because we weren’t given a diagram or a manual of what to do when we got here.  We were told that we need to be productive with our time and that what we produce is our purpose.  But we never stopped to look at what it meant to place value on what people produced instead of how they make us feel.

Animals are here for such a brief moment with us and during that time, they give us their all.  We can rarely do wrong in the eyes of an animal—and if we do they spit/scratch/bite/hiss whatever at us and then get over it.  We have so much to learn from animals in that regard.  Humans have this miraculous ability to steel-trap their memories surrounding any negative little thing, and we hold onto it like a badge of honor.  We don’t let it go and we use that as a framework moving forward.  Not a totally bad idea (I mean we don’t want to walk out in front of a car—that’s vital to remember).  But when it comes to creating positivity, we wait for the proof.  We wait for it to happen to us rather than go out and create it or accept the lessons we’ve learned as lessons.

That is where we can learn a lot from animals.  They don’t do much as far as producing anything.  In fact we clean up a lot of what they produce.  But these beautiful living beings we get to spend our time with are miracles.  And they are wonderful reminders of what we need to do:  Embrace the moment.  The more we can be present, the more we see the answers in front of us.  Love what we have.  Love who we are.  Love everything around us.  Love the connection we have to this place, to these people, to this time.  Love what we are capable of.  Love what it means for us.  Love what love is.  Create the space to simply BE.  It is such a freeing feeling and yes, we spent the last several days talking about purpose and finding who you are to fulfill that purpose, but I want to add that we need to love first.  We need to remember that we are all here for a fleeting moment and we need to be who we are and we need to love who we are.  Take this reminder and love a little extra today.         

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself,”  Montaigne.  A perfect continuation from yesterday’s discussion.  So much of the “why” we are looking for comes from knowing who we are and what purpose we are trying to fulfill.  Belonging to oneself is a matter of knowing oneself.  If we are going to put it in the context of yesterday’s conversation, when we look for a why, we need to know what why is important to us—and that means knowing who we are and what our purpose is.  If we put a frog in pants it won’t serve anything for them and they will fight it.  Similar to us: if we are working to achieve accolades on something that doesn’t interest us, it won’t have any real meaning.  But when we know who we are, those answers become really clear and life is all about clarity.

Montaigne uses the word “belong” in a really specific way—rather that is a pretty specific heavy word to use about oneself.  I like to look at it in the context that we can’t be swayed by outside influences.  We are rock solid in our foundation and know who we are so we know the direction of our sail.  There is a nice sense of freedom in that.  But when it comes to belonging, humans need others as well.  We need a social context and we need help from others.  I know I never wanted to commit to much because I didn’t want my time dictated by other people.  I wanted the freedom to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.  I didn’t want to have to put other people’s priorities before my own.  Perhaps a bit selfish, yes, but I was raised to always put myself last and I felt the sting of not being able to rely on those I had helped when I needed them. I wanted to rely on me.  In that sense, I closed off and became too familiar with my own wants and needs—and they weren’t good in some cases.  Like if I made a mistake I turned to self-harm. 

As I’ve worked through learning who I am and where my drive really comes from, what my purpose really is that has gone away.  I’ve learned to get familiar with my talents rather than what I can do to make people like me.  I’ve learned to invest time in the things I CAN do and developing that rather than worrying about what I can’t do.  That is how you know you belong to yourself: your driver is internal and aligned with who you are.  That is HOW you belong to yourself.  It isn’t an easy feat.  We have a lot of external pressure and stimuli and it’s available 24/7 telling us who to be and what to think.  We are also still deeply indoctrinated in a system built centuries ago.  In order to change any of that we have to know what we can bring to the table and what it needs to look like moving forward. 

I’ve spoken with some people who feel this is a selfish way to go: it’s all about you and your wants and your dreams etc., etc.  The truth is it’s about creating a new reality.  It’s about finding more fulfillment in the world and how you can participate in it.  It’s about genuinely serving your purpose, not just for yourself, but for others.  How does your purpose help others?  There is more than one way to function as a society and what is happening now is the world is showing us that we need a different way.  We need to make room for more.  The old systems didn’t allow for that type of light to shine through.  It was about conforming in order to survive. Now we are letting ourselves shine in order to thrive and what we are learning is that more light means more growth—for everyone.  Take the time to figure out how to belong to yourself.  Be the person you dream of with purpose—who you are.

“We climb the ladder but lose sight of why we started the climb in the first place.  Happiness is an inside job and it begins with being yourself,” Jay Shetty.  I think this is an appropriate follow up to discussing climbing.  I think the part we lose sight of at times is the why behind the dream.  Dreams are enticing and captivating and alluring—they are designed to make us look at “the more.”  If we approach a dream with the end goal solely being wanting more, that dream and the effort we put in become hollow.  There is no reason for doing the work. The second part of Jay’s quote is probably the most important: happiness is an inside job and it begins with yourself.  If we think that something external is going to solve the inner desires and wants once we achieve it, we will lose sight of the value of what we are doing.  Put simply, if we are only doing something for accolades, the accolades become the goal.

Dreaming is nice.  Having the confidence to go after the dream is even better.  Knowing how to break it down and really attain it is better yet.  But if you don’t know why you want something, you will always be looking for the next best thing.  The why matters.  The goal has to be something bigger, something outside of ourselves in the sense of material gain or praise.  The goal needs to be about fulfilling your purpose and that purpose is usually always about how you can bring value to others.  There is a keen sense of personal fulfillment when you are able to help others.  We are bred for it.  Think of the variety of gifts on this planet.  People can teach, dance, sing, build, create, design, orchestrate, make music, battle the elements, make our lives more comfortable, create new ways to communicate with people across the world, unite for common causes, fly, make things explode in beautiful colors, tell stories; the list is endless.  Each of those things has a purpose.

So that is the first gap we have to close, prior to achieving anything: why do we want the things we say we want?  What is the end goal?  Some purposes will have no end, we are meant to carry them forward and improve on them in order to serve a mission.  Some purposes are fleeting, a moment caught in time, a nudge forward to something better—but even those steps matter in the grand scheme of things.  Regardless of longevity, we have to be comfortable with the purpose behind it.  That climb has to be worth it.  Shetty tells us it’s about happiness but I want to amend that happiness comes from that fulfillment.  We can climb any corporate ladder in the world and achieve what others would consider success, but if that isn’t success to us, there is always another ladder to climb.  So take the time to fill in the why before we begin the ascent.  Give ourselves the purpose and that climb will seem effortless.  Not only that, but we will go further than we ever thought possible.

“It’s easy to dream about what you want but in between where you are and what you want there’s a tremendous amount of stuff you’ve got to change and do,” Mel Robbins.  This is similar to the adage of your new life will cost you your old one.  We cannot repeat the habits we’ve always had and expect to yield different results.  It doesn’t work like that.  When we dream, we are given insight into what we are looking to accomplish, a taste of what we think we want our lives to be like.  As we know, we have to learn to close the gap between where we are and where we are going.  That is work and that work can be daunting to many of us, especially if we don’t know all the work we will have to do.

The reason this quote stuck out to me is the simplicity.  Yes, it implies a big lift on our part to get where we want to go (which is sometimes true), but it hits it on the nose: there is work to do.  The life we want won’t magically appear if we aren’t doing anything to bring it forth.  But if we do something in the direction of where we want to go, we will get there.  If we take the smallest step toward what feels right, we will get there eventually, but you have to keep moving.  You have to keep doing.  Slowly the life we dreamed about will start to seem more real and once you yield those results, you will see that the gap has decreased.  That’s all the encouragement you need—to see that goal is within your reach.

One of my mentors is still coaching me through something similar.  I tend to do a lot on my own because of limited time and multiple goals.  She told me to stop looking at the whole thing and thinking I had to do it alone or do it all in one day.  As we discussed it, I told her I can’t jump the Grand Canyon in a single leap.  I have to walk through it, the highs and the lows, in order to get where I’m going.  But each step I take is a step closer to where that end may be.  My mentor then finished with this, “What one action can you take today that will get you closer to your goals?”.  That was it for me.  It clicked.  Yes, there are a million things I want to do and a million goals I want to tackle at once, but that’s the Grand Canyon again.  So what is one thing I can do today (and can do well) that will get me in the direction of my dreams?

It’s easy to dream about what you want but I want to emphasize that the work it takes to get where we want to go can also be easy.  It doesn’t have to be the large daunting thing that we fear we will never achieve, or something so big that we never take the first step.  We can break it down into the most manageable part and take that first small step.  Then the next step reveals itself. Then the next task reveals itself.  Then the next break reveals itself.  Then the next lesson reveals itself.  Then we can take the NEXT step.  It’s an entire beautiful process, but before we know it, we are standing at the top.  We are looking at what once seemed insurmountable from a different perspective—we’ve climbed it. Don’t talk yourself out of your dreams because they seem too big: break it down into what one thing you can do and do it until you know what to do next. 

“Let your soul be more important than this illusion.  Choose yourself and suddenly the chains you thought were binding you dissolve.  And you will see that you are free,” Ashmi Path.  Once we allow the light of who we are to be greater than the fear of not fitting in, that light not only shines on other people, it illuminates the path for ourselves.  Perhaps it blazes a trail for others as well.  But we have to decide that where we are no longer fits and that we want more, and we have to be ready to follow that path no matter what it means.  For many of us, breaking what we know is a challenge because we can’t see what comes next or we are afraid of disappointing those around us, or we simply don’t have a gauge of what success is outside of what we are currently told.  We don’t have a measure to know what works and what doesn’t.  Regardless of that, we get to the point where being who we are is more important that fitting in.

We waste so much time trying to figure out how to manipulate people to feel a certain way toward us.  We try to make them accept us or feel a certain way about us or see us in a certain light.  We spend much of our lives putting on a show.  Imagine what would happen if we dedicated just a fraction of that time to developing who we are and learning to embrace that.  We would be entirely different people.  We would taste a real sense of fulfillment and we certainly wouldn’t worry about fitting into a societal construct of what we are “supposed” to do.  We’d simply be who we are.  And that is what it means to let your soul be more important than this illusion.  It’s all a show.  Once we know how to be who we are and allow the magic of the universe flow through us, it doesn’t matter what others think.  We are simply showing our way.

We are not for everyone and that is ok.  We have to be for ourselves because others will not waste their time with us if they can’t define who we are.  Not that we really need a definition anyway, but if people can’t label us they fear us.  So we learn to work outside of labels with the understanding we need people who speak our language, resonate on our vibration in order to feel that acceptance.  And that is all that matters.  The first key is being who we are and knowing what we have to offer.  It is making peace with the light and all it shows.  It is accepting that we are living in an illusion and understanding we are simply tired of the game.  It’s ok to be tired of the game.  Once you put down the weight of what you’ve been wearing, you are suddenly free to simply be.  That is when life really begins. 

I don’t claim that all parts of this life are bad.  We live on a pretty amazing rock floating in space and if you are reading this on some kind of device, you’re doing pretty well.  We have the ability to communicate and connect all over the world.  We can create amazing works of art.  We are in a phase of mutual discovery and learning that there is more.  This is an awakening and it is a great time to try and find something new.  I do claim that we need to embrace this time more and accept that we can live outside the box.  We never needed the box, but it was created at a different time and it functioned differently—it had a different purpose.  Now we are awakening and we understand there is more to what we have here.  We understand that as scary as it can be, we each have a purpose here and we need to go out on a limb to share it.   We aren’t all here to fit in the box.  We are meant to destroy it.  So cast off those chains and welcome who we are.  They were imaginary anyway.

“Light doesn’t care about being seen as good.  It is completely irreverent toward that.  It just shines.  Light doesn’t care about being accepted.  It just shines.  And because of that we are terrified of it.  Because we know embodying it fully sometimes comes at a cost and part of that includes the consequences of not being seen as good by people who may be blinded by our light.  Most people will want you to see your light until it starts blinding them.  And your job is to practice shining anyways,”  Xavier Dagba.   This is the ultimate letting go.  This is the ultimate KNOWING of what you have to do.  On any journey inward to discovery of our personal path, we seek to unleash the light we have. We seek to share what we know with the world because the world needs our story.  That is shining. 

Our current constructs don’t allow for the freedom the soul requires.  We bind ourselves in socially accepted ways based on ideas a paradigms that no longer exist—and paradigms that no longer work.  As we continue to awaken and feel the rumble of our soul call, we realize that there is the possibility for more.  There is always another way.  This can be terrifying for some.  I’m a people pleaser at heart so what happens to all of those I’ve sought to make happy by fulfilling what they thought was right for me?  What happens to the way I’m used to making money and showing I’ve been successful?  What happens to the definition of successful and acceptance and love and any of the other million things we’ve spent millennia defining to keep people on the same course in an effort to pretend we are at the helm? 

The truth is we ARE at the helm, just not in the conventional or accepted manner.  We’ve always known not everything works for everyone and not everyone has the same dreams or desires.  But we made it impossible for people to share those things because we label that as other.  The truth is that “other” is completely normal.  We have no control at the conventional societal level because it isn’t designed for us: it’s designed for the machine and to keep it going.  But when we are in our day to day lives, we are 100% in control of who we are and we are responsible for knowing what our soul is telling us.  THAT is the ultimate connection with source: hearing and answering our calling.  Fulfilling the purpose we feel rather than what we are told. 

We fear rejection of who we are because on some levels it means we are out of the pack.  That is part of the reason we do fear sharing who we are.  We are afraid the inner parts of us, the real meat of who we are will not be accepted.  Sometimes it isn’t about good or bad, it’s simply about feeling accepted as we are.  When we share our light, all of that is exposed.  There is no hiding what we really feel when we share the depths of our souls.  And no, not everyone will accept that.  Not everyone will understand you.  We have to learn to get past that because there are people for all of us.  They may not be the people we are told to or the people we are born with, but there are people who accept us and people who need us.  Sometimes we aren’t meant to be part of the pack, we are meant to lead it.  In order for that to happen we need to share that light and allow it to do what it does best: shine over every part of ourselves.  Practice shining anyway.

Today I am grateful for help.  I’ve been unusually down lately with illness.  The last 30 days I haven’t been myself as we’ve faced one minor illness after another.  Not enough to completely stop the show but enough to make it not what it should be.  I’ve been fighting it over and over again and I finally couldn’t do it on my own.  I had to get to the doctor today.  He confirmed I have a really nasty infection that wasn’t going to resolve on its own and I’m on two different antibiotics.  I’m not healed by a long shot, but I feel better getting help.

Today I am grateful for disruption and flow.  This year hasn’t gone the way I thought it would.  We are almost ¾ of the way through and there are moments I feel like we fell flat, short of the mark.  But in this instance, with illness at the helm for the moment, I’m seeing that sometimes we really have to allow no matter what it entails.  It’s challenging, it’s scary, it’s even a little sad, and it is most certainly frustrating.  But letting go allows for something else to take place.  Even if it doesn’t look like what you want, it is for a reason.  I’m not where I want to be but the progress is still more than where I’ve been. 

Today I am grateful for progress.  There needs to be a separate line marking the appreciation for where we are at.  To call out the specific things that mark growth even if it isn’t perfect.  We have to remind ourselves that perfection isn’t attainable but things are often perfect as they are.  It’s the confusing twist of everything is exactly as it’s supposed to be so we don’t have to work hard.  We can take our hands off the wheel and allow every now and then.  In those moments we learn to take our hands off the wheel.  That may look like asking for help or even acknowledging that something that went awry wasn’t a failure.  We all have our seasons. 

Today I am grateful for rest.  I’ve been looking for a different kind of rest.  My mind goes a lot as I’ve often shared, but I’m at an odd point because there are moments I need to physically move and I want to, but then these illnesses come in where I can’t move my body so my mind spins more.  But the answers I’m looking for are in both spaces: the physical and the mental.  I need to strengthen the body and the mind and there are moments of activity and recovery in both.  This is a period I need to listen to my mind and stop. 

Today I am grateful for another reminder of clarity.  We had an experience with some people this past weekend where we were relying on some support from our friends.  We were hosting an event for our business and no one showed.  This is completely common, I know.  A lot of places bust until they see something tangible they can believe in.  But the hurt hit differently.  Some of the people we wanted around us are the same we’ve supported blindly through anything.  We’ve made tons of effort, some completely unnecessary to prove we’d be there and it did hurt knowing in a time of need they didn’t reciprocate.  Now it isn’t that they aren’t our friends—these people have helped us a ton—but seeing where their belief is is a bit tough.  So we choose to move on and find the people we can help, the people who need us, the people who see the value.  It will come.

Today I am grateful for where I am.  Missing the support of those closest to us put me in a different mindset.  Yes, it was hurtful, but it made me realize what we have.  We are super fortunate to be where we are and to have what we do—and we have worked for every little thing we have.  We don’t necessarily need the praise and support of the people who don’t see beyond where we are at now.  It’s fine.  But I am going to remember that moment as a stepping stone.  That is a launching point into where I need to be.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead. 

We don’t often talk about the power of making a decision and something happened recently that reinforced the need to talk about it.  As I spoke about earlier in the week, my son started school and I took the day off.  During that day I did a ton of work that I actually wanted to focus on.  I cleaned, I organized, I prepared for an event we are having.  I also spent a lot of time thinking and working through some more personal stuff. Throughout the day I kept finding myself thinking, “this is exactly what I want to be doing.”  Previously I found myself lamenting and wanting to work from home but I didn’t have the clarity to make it happen—it felt like a fantasy.  But something about the productivity of that day made it feel both real and possible.  It was pivotal for me because that has been the clearest I’ve ever felt about creating that type of reality.  The feeling was so powerful I told my boss the next day that I need to find something where I can work from home.  Based on how I felt, I knew it in my gut.  Logistically, I don’t want to be as far as I am from my son during the day—that’s pretty solid for me that I want to be home.

Now that was a decision.  I could have held it inside and continued to think working from home was a pipedream or fantasy.  But I decided it was time to speak it out loud.  I felt the clarity and I recognized the power of putting out the energy you want into the universe. Let me tell you, it was such an incredibly freeing feeling.  Even more surprising, my boss didn’t react how I expected.  She actually was very understanding.  Granted we don’t have the capacity to make it happen at this point, but I definitely have the clarity and the direction now.  From the perspective of creating the life we want, I’ve spoken about manifesting and learning how to close the gap from where we are to where we want to be.  But the truth is when we are manifesting the life we want, we often underestimate the power of simply making the choice.  Number one, it feels amazing to decide on something but once we make a decision, the rest falls away and things get really clear.  Once things are clear, the universe conspires to make it happen.

I don’t claim this will happen over night, not by any means.  But I feel a shift.  I feel the path opening up toward the life I want.  They always say that things will come together to make it happen and it certainly feels that way.  This is the difference between thinking it and speaking it. When we hold something in, it has no chance to manifest.  We need to have a moment of trust to speak what we want into reality.  We have to trust that once we speak it, it will come and that can be a scary place to work from.  We don’t always know how things will turn out but one thing is certain: if you don’t put out what you actually want, you will certainly never get it.  But the most important part is admitting to yourself what you actually want.  It’s only when you understand that that you can understand what is possible and in that moment, you ask different questions.  Questions like, “What will happen if I start working toward it?”  and like, “What happens if I say this out loud?”  All I know for certain is that the odds of creating what you want are far greater if you speak them and align with what it takes.  Happy decision making!

I just wanted to share a quick thought on trashing our houses.  I read a quote from Dandapani that said, “I live in my house therefore I don’t trash my house.  I live in my mind therefore I don’t trash my mind.”  This fell on the heels of me cleaning the house and wanting to organize everything and the realization that I want to work from home (next post goes into more detail about that).  Regardless, we have multiple homes.  Our physical location, our emotional state, and what we take in.  When we consider the thoughts that run through our minds on a daily basis, it’s easy to see how many are redundant, how many are negative etc.  If we allow ourselves to go through the same things over and over again, it’s also easy to see how we create a mess.

So this is a polite and clear reminder to make sure you’re taking care of your house, both physical and mental.  Look at the thoughts you’re having on a regular basis and figure out if they are yours or if they are coming from somewhere else.  Ask yourself if you can change your course of thought.  Ask yourself what you actually want to be thinking about and manifesting and creating in this world.  Ask yourself how you want to feel.  Ask yourself what you’re choosing where you are right now and what you want to choose moving forward.  How do you want to move forward?  Release all that doesn’t serve and move forward with what is left.  Take out the trash, whatever form that trash takes.

Last week my son started kindergarten.  I know, it’s so cliché, a mom having a melt down on her kid’s first day of school.  But that isn’t exactly what happened.  I mean, full transparency, I needed to take the day off because of it, but it wasn’t an entire breakdown.  So my son is definitely extra sensitive and I pick up on that really easily so I knew he was having some emotions the morning of his first day.  I kept my cool and we walked to the school without any major issues, just the usual nerves he expressed well.  When we got to the school I took the obligatory pictures (I mean, come one, they put stands out there for kids to take pictures with, who wouldn’t have done it?!).  Again he did really well.  The doors opened and I let him walk in by himself but as soon as I noticed other parents going in, I changed my mind and I ran in after him. I felt guilty and didn’t want him to feel alone.  He had made it to his classroom so I knew he was ok and I took more pictures and then I walked home.

The first wave of emotion hit me when I got home.  The house was too quiet.  Yes, I do relish those moments and I normally seek them out because I’m trying to get things done, but this quiet was different.  It felt distinctly absent of something.  I know, that’s how silence and quiet work.  But it felt  heavy to me.  I dove into cleaning and organizing and it helped.  As time moved on, I started thinking about the things my son would help me with.  When I got to the piles of his toys, I started thinking of the things he would fight me on.  And out of nowhere, the thought hit me that one day everything will be clean and quiet forever.  That’s when I actually got sad.  I’ve spoken about my weird thing with time before, and in that moment I realized how quickly time passes.  My parents had an issue earlier in the week and they really struggled with it so I think I was extra sensitive to the passage of time.

It’s such a funny thing when you transition to that phase where you are taking care of both your parents and your kids.  I still remember going to my first day of kindergarten and now I’m taking my son.  I’ve transitioned from child to parent and my parents are now grandparents.  I remember feeling so safe with my parents and now I’m trying to create that security for my son.  That safety I felt was partially because of how close I was to my parents because my siblings were so much older than me.  And then the second wave hit me: my son is an only child.  So this first day was also my last day.  That was when I actually did lose it a little bit. 

Now, I don’t mean to come across as a complete emotional wreck or an overdramatic person (although I totally am).  The reality is I am super sensitive and these moments mean a lot to me.  They also teach me a lot.  Primarily about emotional control, but also about how to value what we have and to appreciate how we got here.  It’s important to relish in the moments we have and to appreciate them while we have them.  I remember trying to grow up so quickly because I wanted to be like my siblings so I never learned to appreciate where I was.  I want my son to be able to enjoy his time and I want to enjoy the time I have with him.  So often we wish for the next step or the next stage.  We want to be through all the hard stuff.  But we miss that the hard stuff shapes the good at the end.  We miss that we have good times on the journey to the next part.  The part we are on now is what we have. Everything is always beginning and ending so let those moments remind us of what is really important.