Right after I wrote yesterday’s piece, I saw another quote about reducing fear through knowledge that put more context around being curious about things we wouldn’t normally have interest in or had a strong opinion on. Perhaps it doesn’t mean that something is wrong with us or we are having a break with reality—perhaps it’s just the brain wanting us to inform ourselves so we are aware of all sides of a situation. It seems that the thought was directing me to remember to learn about what we fear—the more we can educate and empower ourselves, the more we have an edge in the situation. When we know about what we fear we find solutions. As I think about it, I believe that was really the point in what that debate teacher had told me so many years ago. It’s lack of knowledge and ignorance that create fear and if we have the opportunity to change that we should always seek to find out a new answer because the more we bring light to a situation, the fewer dark corners things have to hide in. So if we find ourselves drawn to something it isn’t necessarily a sign we are a hypocrite/values or changing or that something is wrong with us or we aren’t who we thought we were—it’s natures way of reminding us there are multiple sides to every story and that the only way to be fully informed is to seek all sides. Stay curious, people, it’s a gift.
A random question, working through it in my mind…Have you ever found your brain suddenly interested in things that you never believed in before? Like topics you thought were abhorrent suddenly become interesting and you want to know more? Or behaviors you’d never support before seem to make sense? It kind of feels like supporting the opposing team in a way or switching sides. Part of that is human (animal) nature and we have to develop a tolerance for the possibility we are wrong because that is how we evolve and learn. If we have to trust that we are in the right place at the right time, I have to trust that shifting thoughts/beliefs/opinions are a sign or a natural progression to look at things differently, a way to see something different in the world and, most importantly, to learn a new lesson. Either that or I am severely in the throws of middle age and having yet another identity crisis. Either scenario is likely at this stage of the game but I’m embracing it. Curiosity is a gateway and I know they say curiosity killed the cat but the truth is sometimes we have to take that chance to see what we can learn. And there is a lot out there we don’t know. Humans like a good story and quick answer wrapped in a neat little bow—and there always has to be a reason for everything. But the stories we tell have a spin on them from every person involved and in the middle lies the truth.
So I’ve been on a huge documentary kick on all sorts of topics ranging from the Carnival Triumph disaster to the Toronto mayor issues and old controversies and crises and murder mysteries. I love a good mystery because I have always believed there is more to every story—because there is. It’s also intriguing that all of this stuff comes out NOW. Take a look on any streaming and you’ll see a ton of “unheard tapes” or “new theories” on things we all think we know. I heard a conversation about how if we can believe x story from y person who really has no credibility, then what else would we believe and what do we really know? All these years we “knew” the story of Nixon and what a crook, backasswards greedy son of a bitch he was. And ok, that may still be true, but the point is it depends on perspective. What happens when we shift our perspective to take in more of the story? What happens when we look at all sides and deep dive? Is there a possibility that ideas opposed to what we know might have a chance to be true? Is there a crack in the story? Because that is something we can’t handle—if the truth is too simple or too complex it doesn’t make sense but if there’s a POSSIBLE way to connect things, then we open a whole new revolution. Are the conspiracies real? What the hell don’t we know because someone didn’t tell us or they didn’t think we could handle the full story? I want to know the whole story—my brain can handle it and I know the truth is where that bow comes in for me no matter how painful or disturbing it may be.
When I took debate class years and years ago, the teacher said the way to make a good argument is to research the side you DON’T support because it will give you something to argue FOR what you do support. I understood it practically then but the way information flies around now, it makes sense experientially as well. We have so many “facts” coming at us from different angles so quickly it is really hard to discern fact from reality—compounded by the idea that someone has to be the first to get the news out there, truth is harder and harder to find. We have to operate on speculation and opinion and we are quick to put our two cents into anything because now everyone has a platform to speak that the world can see. So perhaps there’s a level of mistrust in what we’ve always been told, perhaps it’s the intrigue that there are other answers to what we thought we knew. But there is a point to taking the time to understand something even if it goes against what you believe/think you know. It’s how we learn. There are infinite possibilities in this universe—perhaps the whole thing is like some giant SIM where we are the experiment to see what works. I think that is what fascinates me about the brain: Even if these things don’t exist, the fact that we can imagine them in our minds makes them real on some level. We are fascinating creatures. The ability to make the complex look easy, the ability to make the easy complex—we are dichotomous beings with multiple trains of thought and there is no way that multiple worlds CAN’T exist together. We know the reality is that mathematically speaking we are just one version of what can be. So should we be upset with ourselves when our feelings or tastes or curiosities change? It’s all for a reason.
I talked about safe harbors and doing what we are meant to do—I’ve talked about that a lot but if I’m honest, I feel like I’m missing part of that story. What happens when we know what we have to do and we know we need to take the steps to do it but somehow we still stop ourselves from doing it? Self-esteem is the kicker there. We need to believe we can do it and we need to have the belief that we WILL do it. I know my fear is that I can’t see something through—like I will be able to start it but I won’t be able to see it through to the end, to make it what it was meant to be. Essentially I’m afraid of shitting the bed—like starting out really strong and then just falling short. I heard a TED talk the other day talking about how we psych ourselves up with the enormity of certain tasks and we think we can’t do it because we are essentially trying to eat the whole horse at once. But if you can make just one gray square, you can replicate it for something bigger. The example provided was a picture of Brad Pitt being replicated one gray square at a time. So if it is that easy, what holds us back?
We all have hang ups. Self-doubt and limiting beliefs, an unsupportive circle (those who don’t really support us/only take what they can get from us), friends or family question everything we do (or make us question ourselves), past experiences with work/school/work/family etc. that make us believe we are incapable somehow. We are all capable of changing our self-talk and inner dialogue. At the end of the day we are still animals and how we really feel is visible on some level (energetically or otherwise) to everyone around us. So if we aren’t fully confident in what we do, people pick up on that and know—and instinct takes over and they will tear us down in some way or another. I listened to a lecture from one of my business partners and he said that, “Some treat this business like driving a toy car—if we aren’t confident and don’t exude that [confidence] to our network, people can smell that doubt on us. We aren’t driving a toy car—we are in the Lamborghini—we need to step up.” The same is true for everything we do in life from knowing what we want to eat in a restaurant and asking for it to starting that business that no one understands or sees the endgame for.
We know people have opinions on things they know nothing about—we do too. We need to keep that in perspective because if they don’t know what we are talking about in relation to a goal, or what the experience/purpose is, they have no room to judge what needs to be done to succeed. What they don’t understand or what they don’t experience will never make sense to them and we can’t make that happen. The reality is they aren’t even on the fast track to success themselves and likely aren’t even clear on what they want to do with their own lives so it’s easier to judge someone else’s actions. For our business in particular, they often say “Get to a billion a year in revenue before you start talking about [what we do] because we can say and prove we make a billion a year. That’s the difference—we walk the walk.” We also have to accept that it isn’t our job to make people believe in what we do because not everyone is meant to have the same experience as us. The key is to keep practicing those basics, those first steps because we know they work and eventually will show the whole picture. We have to trust that sometimes we understand things other people don’t and we must stick with our own path. Whether in the first day, week, month, or year, if we see that spark, we have to trust that we are in the right place at the right time. We don’t just have the cookie, we have the whole bakery.
Today I am grateful for standing my ground. There often isn’t need for a big show or the drama that accompanies the chaos that people like to bring into our lives. Some people simply like a show, they like to be the victim, they like the energy in that type of attention. We do not have to participate in any of that. Yesterday I had to make a choice to not participate in an event because of the behaviors around it. I had done my part in asking to discuss certain things that occurred prior to this event with the goal of clearing the air and creating understanding—I am no longer interested in pretending shitty behavior hasn’t occurred and I have always been big on discussing what happened so everyone involved is on the same page. Neither of the latter two things occurred before this event so I made the choice that this wasn’t something I would participate in because I was not comfortable with pretending things were ok or giving the impression that recent events were acceptable. We didn’t make a big scene, we removed/eliminated ourselves from the drama by not participating. That was the best choice I could have made for my family.
Today I am grateful for spontaneous date nights and family fun. My husband and I very purposefully set up our home for entertaining. He always loved going out when he was younger while I preferred to stay home. I was always the worrier about our finances and frankly I never did well in crowds/social situations (shocker, I know). It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy going out and doing things, I just knew at the time we couldn’t afford to do all the things we wanted to do as often as he wanted to do them and there was usually some issue or another that I would have with someone (that is a LONG story so suffice it to say that I struggled). Regardless, we love games and movies and other sorts of entertainment so we set up our home so we could have large gatherings here with people we care about. We are so incredibly grateful to have been able to set up our basement that way (we found amazing deals on 98% of all the things we have down there and inherited some of it) and we love spending time together hanging out, playing, and relaxing—we don’t take that for granted for a second. And, again, it was very intentional so it’s always nice to have a plan come together like that. With that being said, sometimes we need to shift the energy and it’s another fortunate thing that we are able to go out every so often with each other and simply let loose and have a good time—like a bowling/arcade night. It keeps us fresh and it keeps us close as we find ways to have fun both in our home and out. I am FOREVER grateful to get to spend time with my family like that, especially when things are a bit challenging emotionally. Sometimes you just need to do something fun together to get out of a funk—getting out of our heads always helps.
Today I am grateful for planning. I have often shared my complicated relationship with planning, time, anxiety, and OCD. In my last role at work I was simultaneously incredibly organized and scatter brained and forgetful and pulled in multiple directions while standing my ground in others. The level of responsibility shouldn’t have been anymore than I’d had in my previous roles, frankly it should have been less because I had a smaller amount of direct reports, but I was over 3 unrelated areas and often had to switch gears mid thought to address one fire or another and, toward the end, some of the interpersonal issues became so severe that I truly didn’t know what to address first—ever. I would come in and be able to handle what was on the calendar but I would never know what other crap I would have to address that day and that crap came fast and furious all day long in a barrage of bullshit (most of it avoidable on top of it). So I often planned my days but still managed to feel like I was falling down a slide with no way to stop, asking myself where the time went. I also found myself locked in a basement office with no perception on time and feeling like everything was slipping away, pulled out from under me. I’d wake up and repeat the same bullshit stressors every day on repeat and I did it for years, seeking ways to fit in all the things I WANTED to do, yet somehow never managing to find the time to do it because I’d be exhausted at the end of the day. Now I’m in a role where I have a significant amount of freedom and I felt lost because I wasn’t sure how to manage my days—I’d been so used to keeping myself open to deal with crises at all times that I didn’t know how to be NOT responsible for everything. So here I had the freedom I wanted but still wasn’t getting what I wanted to do done. And then I realized I have the ability to take control and plan out my day the same way I would have for anything else but to prioritize the things I valued/needed to do for my sanity. The goal of this was a new life, and here I have the key and I’m standing at the door. All I needed to do was walk through it. I was allowed (and now encouraged) to prioritize the things I needed to do—my life comes first. It’s still an adjustment, but what a beautiful thing to adjust to. I’ve been told all the things I envisioned for my life are priority so now I’m diving in and adapting to making sure those things are added to my to do list just as much as my other responsibilities and it feels amazing to make progress in that arena. So I’m grateful for that opportunity and for learning to follow through on that.
Today I am grateful for love. We all know love isn’t just romantic—love is an energy. The purpose of love is to bring us closer to what it is we do and we experience love in so many ways. Yes, I LOVE my family and I am bonded to them like no other both as a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sibling, and a niece—and I can’t forget my furry babies as well. I LOVE my friends for their understanding and compassion and for their creativity. But I also love that I have this freedom now. I love my creativity and that I get to spend more time with it. I love that I have more time to take care of myself and share those results. I love that I have more time to focus on my business and helping people by doing the things I love. I love that I get to work on my writing more. I love that I get to spend more time in faith and healing. I love that I get to set up my home how I want to and that I am fortunate enough to be able to do so. I love that I get to learn things personally and professionally and that I have access and time to do so. I love that I have the ability to put all of the pieces of this puzzle together into one beautiful picture and I love so many pieces of the life I have created that the rough points really don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things. When it comes to that energy of love, I see how important it is and how love really is the driver for this life. This world really is magical and full of infinite possibility—we just need to be open to see it and love gives us the power to see that. Love is the way to connect with ourselves and the world around us and part of setting up these new boundaries and experiencing this new gratitude in my life is to protect my ability to be in this love state as often as I can. We need to be an example of that.
Today I am grateful for presence (and manifestation). I think this is one I’m going to make as a weekly thing because, along with love, I now realize that presence isn’t something we can be grateful for when we experience it—it’s something we need to be aware of and grateful for at all times and it is a privilege to be alive in the moment. Presence is a deliberate act, a choice to be in contact with what IS and not force the moment to change. I’m working from home and my son is on summer break and we need to work together to see what we are doing that day and what the plan will be with my work schedule and the things he needs to do. I’m learning to allow exactly what needs to happen to happen. The house is still torn apart so distraction abounds in the moment but there are still so many things to be aware of and grateful for in the chaos. We get to be the eye of the storm and keep that calm during moments of (what feels like) insanity. While my sister was still in town, we connected in a way we haven’t in a long time—we had lots of long talks, we walked, we bonded over things we have in common. During one of those conversations I had recommended some books to her. She liked one of them and said she was going to buy it and the sequel to that one she said she would consider after fully reading the first one. She texted me last night that she went to an event and she got a free book—the sequel to the book I had recommended. Had I not paid attention to what she was going through, I wouldn’t have thought of those books, and together we manifested that in her life. I manifested the calm and the presence for myself. I’m grateful for the gentle reminders that we are allowed to connect with our power.
We talk about what holds us back but we need to examine what the real issues is—like what is the real obstacle keeping us from living the life we want when we are more than capable of breaking the scenario down and taking it on bit by bit? Today I want to talk about the pursuit of more in an unconventional way. Having discussed the purpose of leaving a safe harbor, now I want to dive a bit deeper into the ways we try to leave the harbor. Lessons pop up in the most unlikely of places and I’m oddly addicted to watching America’s Sweethearts, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Sure, a lot of them are 20+ years younger than me and they’re the type of clique-y girls I detested in my younger years—but kind of, sort of, probably wanted to be a part of. Regardless of personal trauma triggers, there is something captivating about the story these women share. I feel the institution is such a fine line of what it stands for and supports in what they look for—the aesthetic is important and highly focused on but so is the person and what they contribute to themselves, the team, and the community at large.
First and foremost, I will say that these are highly intelligent, talented, driven, passionate, well-rounded women. Not one of them looks at this as a meal ticket to something else—they do it because they love it. The show captures the amount of dedication and work that goes into the dance aspect of it as far as the discipline and the ability to learn quickly, but it also shows what these girls do outside of that work. One of the leads works 4 jobs including being a licensed pharmacist running the family business, a Pilates teacher, and an assistant to an executive. Another is a billing director for a law firm preparing to take the LSATs. Last season, one of them was a dentist. I have always wanted to navigate multiple things like that—and that is still a goal of mine because there are so many things to do in this life and I never thought we had to settle on just one thing. It takes a lot of energy, clarity, and discipline, but it’s doable as all these women demonstrate. Aside from burnout potential, the multi-faceted focus is absolutely something to strive for. Life has a lot to offer so take advantage of it.
Which leads to the other side of the story that needs to be addressed: the standards these girls live up to and the fact that if they don’t, there is someone waiting in the wings to take their spot—and they know it. Dance is a tough industry to begin with but this company throws in crazy timelines to learn the material and is quite unforgiving when it comes to mistakes. One mistake can result in being cut. Standards like that can set people up for a potential tailspin into darker things. Many of the girls do deal with various mental health issues and a few of them opened up about eating disorders. The uniform leaves nothing to the imagination and the requirement to get a makeover to meet the standards of the perfectly-together-woman seem overwhelming for even the most capable. But these women still take that chance—they love dance and they want to put that skill to use and they put themselves on the line personally and professionally to do it. They show what it means to deal with the good and the bad of what we love and how to fight for what is right within that. There are so many layers to what we experience in life that we can’t take things at face value.
“Ships are safe in the harbor but that’s not what ships are built for,” John Augustus Shedd. This is something I wanted to revisit. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, the purpose of life and the chances we take and the ones we don’t and how they tie into our purpose here. I was talking with my sister the other day about fears and I noticed there was a distinct difference in the type of fear we had and what we thought it meant to be risk averse versus risk seeking. Do we let our fears dampen the risks we need to take or does our desire for something make us take risks that are too much for us to handle. What makes us seek risk and is there a real purpose to it in this day and age? There was a point to taking risk s back in the day because we needed to survive and if we didn’t we would die. But we are much more comfortable and settled in today’s time, we have many more options and we have resources readily available. As a result people look for things to spike that adrenaline as it gives a power surge. We were not meant to jump out of airplanes or go bungee jumping or dive to the deepest depths of the ocean. That isn’t something the human body was designed to do yet we push ourselves to do it. There is just as much an innate instinct to challenge ourselves and push the limits as there is for comfort and calm.
Taking on life is one of the scariest things we can do. If you believe a certain way, it is said that we choose these lives, these incarnations and lessons before we even come here. Others believe we have no choice and are thrust into this world as an unwilling participant who needs to learn the game. Regardless of the scenario, we find ourselves in the same position: we need to figure out what to do in this life. We are born with an innate knowing both of who we are and our purpose so whether we are here by choice or not, I firmly believe we all do have a purpose and we are here to discover it or remember it depending on your point of view. A big theme this week has been the topic of purpose and distraction and if we allow the distraction of the world to interfere with our purpose, then we will think the entire point of life is to sit and look pretty—potential to function but sitting there withering away. We are meant to get a little dirty, to get tossed around, to learn how to take ourselves from one destination to another and then to another if necessary.
Sometimes we need the reminder to shake it up every now and then and to know the difference between those challenges we avoid because of the risk versus the challenges we wouldn’t take just because we have no interest in that path. Like, I have a phobia of large bodies of water but I know knowing how to swim is beneficial so even if it scares me, that is a challenge to take on. At the same time I have no need to learn to hold my breath for super long periods of time because I’m not anticipating deep diving. There are things we do for the sake of doing them but there are also things we can do that are risky and necessary and part of the learning process to do what we came here to do. Expression is a challenge we all need to take on in all art forms. We may put pretty words on paper in a journal but we may be meant to share that with the world, to make it loud and clear and share a message that very well may change the course of someone’s life. The entire point is to not seek safety, it is to practice enough and develop enough skill that we master what we are meant for and learn how to get through the hardest of times even when we think we can’t. It is to learn how to steer the ship through the toughest of storms in stead of focusing on keeping her safe and contained—even if she comes through a little battered, we have learned to direct our own ship to a different destination, one step closer to what it is we are looking for.
“You can’t quietly be on fire,” no official attribution cited. There are some conversations we don’t want to have in our lives like facing the reality of who we are. Fearing that all the things people said and thought about us were true. So we hold in and repress and we try to be what everyone wants us to be until our very souls seem to stifle. We can’t breathe and we feel like we drown under the weight of our own worry. We fear reaching out to people, we fear what it looks like or what it means, we fear appearing too needy, too concerned with ourselves. Frankly we are lost in what it means to even ask for help because we are lost as a whole trying to figure out what we are meant to do. WE have forgotten what real connection is. The purpose of connection is to help each other lighten the load and bear the burden of life. We aren’t here to judge each other, we are here to help each other and we are training ourselves to handle what it is we are meant to do, to discover our purpose and to make that our primary focus/goal. What we have lost sight of, however, is that the goal was always to help each other make this a better place and to share in the beauty and deliciousness that is life together—so we can all experience that joy of being alive.
We have drowned ourselves in the distraction of life. When I really look at it, I have started to think the distraction of life was set up with decent intent in the first place as ways to celebrate and share different facets of creativity and joy and connection, different views. We were all given different points of view in order to see different facets of the world and to consider all the different possibilities of the world. It’s a beautiful celebration of the mind and the connection people have to the universe and to each other and how we express that connection. But that distraction took a darker turn once we started settling and modernizing and adapting to what the world did—we started to focus on manipulation as the tactic because we understood power meant dominion. Once that became the goal, distraction was meant to funnel people into a sort of cage that served other people’s goals. And that is when the world stared to go made because we lost our connection to ourselves. We quite literally set ourselves on fire in order to appease what other people wanted and lost sight of what we were here to do in the first place: our personal purpose.
We can’t sit there on fire, miserable in our own worlds, all the while working to make other people satisfied and successful while our purpose shrivels and fades away. What we give attention to grows and expands and this is a universe of growth. We are all well aware of what happens when we unite to a common goal. The force of the energy combines and expands and multiplies and amazing things happen. When we sit in misery or with any intense emotion on our own, nothing will happen. People won’t see the flames until it’s too late. When we first start to feel the burn of desire, follow it. When we feel the spark of creativity, nourish it. When we feel the sting of someone else pushing us to the point where our focus and energy is no longer our own, that is the fuel. The pressure from society to conform to that type of behavior is the match. When we don’t live up to those expectations that is the fire and it is often a slow burn. So when we feel ourselves starting to combust and struggling to put out the flames every day, that is when we need to call in reinforcements to help put us out because it will burn us down if we keep it inside for too long. The only time I want to be on fire is with my purpose, when I get in the flow of creativity and I feel my power and energy directed somewhere. That is burn with purpose and I don’t ever want to let anyone direct my flame inward. Fuel my growth, fan the desire, but don’t stifle that flame so it fuels your dream/life/work/goal instead of my own. Ignite the flame, don’t let it burn us down.
Yesterday I spoke about how our energy has a ripple effect into the world, both personal and literally on a global level—perhaps universal—but today I want to focus on the personal implications of it. We are responsible for our own actions, monitoring our emotions, our progress toward a goal, for deciding on a goal, and what we want the trajectory of our lives to be. We can decide to do a million things but none of them will happen if we don’t take action toward them. A team member of mine shared a super simple but potent piece of advice that ties right into this concept of action and energy: Daily effort toward goals is what moves you forward. It doesn’t have to be huge leaping strides every day, it is the consistency and drive and heart we put into whatever it is we decide to do that moves us. I’ve chosen at least a dozen different paths in this lifetime, each time thinking I was doing the right thing, that I had found “it” only for it to crumble away and leave me confused, wanting, and empty. I can fully admit that in some cases they were merely bad choices—they were things that weren’t for me. In others I know it was a matter of lack of clarity. And still in others, it was fear to do what needed to be done. In all cases, it was about not doing what needed to be done.
When we make the choice to not take action on our goals or do the necessary result producing actions then we have set in motion the lack of an outcome on whatever it was we decided. As a society I think we set ourselves up for failure with the belief that we have to do it all RIGHT NOW or we have to do a million things in order to somehow be deemed worthy. We take on too much and we self-sabotage to the point where the level of what we are trying to accomplish or the amount we are trying to accomplish is unattainable. That isn’t the case for everything. There are those things we want and we can see them and we know what we have to do to get them and we don’t do it—so the question becomes what did we miss in our own lives as well as what did we deprive the world of? Energy is key and I am learning and continue to be humbled at how much we actually (perhaps just me) need to let go of, how much work is necessary to really channel our energy—or even understand it. The universe has a funny way of really testing that resolve when we think we have it under control, testing if we really want it, testing if we are really where we think we are on our journey. Those with the gumption to stick it through to the end are rare to a degree, and the long term effects of sticking it out are evident in their lives and in society.
The last component to this talk is that we must remember to never get too big for the little things—they matter. The results really are in the details, but the key is really that we must be willing to do all the things that need to be done in order to succeed in our goal. No, that isn’t about driving ourselves crazy and making sure every detail is perfect—perfect isn’t the goal. It IS about making sure we have all the pieces in place to make things function smoothly and to full capacity. I heard it said that the little things are the big things and the big things are the little things. It’s all a matter of perspective—understanding that we need to have a big picture and be firm on the destination but flexible on the details and the how all while knowing we have to be willing to handle the small details. Life is this balance of clarity, consistency, and knowing how NOT to get hung up on something while also NOT ignoring what needs to be done. No one said this was easy and in reality it is the greater lesson to life itself—Balance and clarity. Somehow we have to find that sweet spot of knowing what we want and how to get it while knowing that our goals may or may not be part of the bigger universal plan. We have to stick with what we know while expanding what we want to know. Keep ourselves in check and be really clear on the destination, and above all, be willing to adapt and flow so we do the work it takes and let go of the rest.
I heard a comment on the ripple effect basically saying that when you retreat you’re stealing form the ripple effect, the lives you don’t know you’re touching—those we know and those we don’t know. Even with the greatest intentions of intentionality, , we can never know the full scope of impact of our actions or the full breadth of our reach. We never know the full reach we have because there are times that reach extends beyond our lives and even our lifetimes. Think of some of the names in history from Socrates to Da Vinci to King Arthur to Washington and Lincoln and Curie to Ross to Einstein and Hawking and MLK. All the minds that have impacted the world and will continue to impact the world because their words and work are timeless. We’ve evolved and developed and expanded the theories and understanding these people shared but the core principle they developed is the same, and that is incredibly powerful to know that there were theories, philosophies, and ideas that people understood when others didn’t and they stuck with it and shared it enough that it transcended time to make its way to us today. The ripple effect can go simpler and also deeper at the same time—it doesn’t have to be a world altering paradigm. You never know how many people you impact because you smiled at someone. What if they were having an awful day and suddenly you smile at them for no reason? That can change the entire trajectory of their day and then they go on to smile at someone or find the energy to help someone and that person does the same and so on and so on.
When we stop sharing our gift or our message, we are taking away from the energy exchange and the possibility of that person sharing our initial exchange. Energy doesn’t lie and the world moves on energy. What we see is what we are. Yes, there are major events that shape the course of what we do but even those big events may be influenced by the small things. The world is shaped and changes based on the small things, the accumulation of the little things that build up over time. When we are intentional with what we are doing and we approach the world with the idea that we are going to do our best and we work to manage our emotions, we see it differently and can appreciate how connected we all are. The closer we get to understanding our connection to each other and the Earth itself, the more intentional we are with everything we do because we do not operate in a bubble—our actions aren’t isolated. We become more careful with our energy and how it’s managed because of this understanding. We are aware of the impact of what we do or don’t do, the choices we make and what is done to us as well. This is also how generational patterns and energies work as well: the energy our ancestors carry from their experiences flows down from person to person. It’s up to us to recognize harmful traits/energy that doesn’t serve and to work to break those patterns because we can stop the cyclical patterns when we see them. It’s up to us to manage the energy we share with the world, period.
Much of this is basically the same concept as The Butterfly Effect, how actions set other actions in motion that we aren’t always aware of—there can be long term impacts from what we do. I spent a lot of time fearing that responsibility, wanting to make the right choices all the time because I was so highly sensitive to what my actions did to other people. Ironically as connected as we are to the world, we still struggle to grasp the full extent of how what we do affects other people. I’m not suggesting we live our lives appeasing every person around us, contorting to every which whim someone may have. The entire point of this is to be aware of what we do, to slow down enough to put some thought into the action before taking it—and when we take the action to be fully invested in it, knowing what we want it to do. Be intentional. The biggest component to this concept is that we are all connected and our actions impact others. The same is said for our inaction as well. Not everything we do will have a life-altering impact on people—like if you wear two different socks, no one even has to know about that. But the universe responds to everything we do, and everything we decide but the breadth of the ripple is indeterminant. Bezos may have envisioned a big picture when he started working out of his garage but the impact wasn’t fully understood. So choose carefully and don’t deny the world of our gifts. We never know what they can turn into.
When you’re in despair in the valley, what happens when you keep marching? Eventually you’ll reach the peak. There comes a point when we have no choice but to keep going. Simply pick up and keep putting one foot in front of the other. There are tons of sayings supporting this: “The only way out is through,” “Tomorrow is another day,” “This too shall pass.” Moving forward feels near impossible at times. It feels heavy, like we have to fight to even lift that foot and finding the strength to do it feels impossible. Sometimes we need the reminder that we need to let go. We have to release the burden that’s holding us back. Sometimes we have to stop for a moment to catch our breath and find our bearings and in those moments, if we listen carefully enough, we hear what the next right thing is.
I propose that sometimes when you’re in despair we need to sit with it more. We need to dive in further and learn to unpack what’s actually there, why we are feeling despair in the first place. It’s easy to sit with people and hear their story and tell them what the problem is. Like a friend comes to us crying about something and we have the answer for them. When we have to dig through our own shit, it gets really uncomfortable at times. There comes a point, however, when we see that clearing the surface level of shit isn’t enough. We have to dig deeper to really get to the root of it because getting to the source of what’s causing the issue and making the shit keep filling in is the only way to stop it. We don’t need to keep piling on and it does no good to do the work if it keeps coming. We need to stop it at the source.
The key here is understanding that some of that shit comes from our own minds and we need to have enough wherewithal to know we need to take control—to stop and gather our bearings. It is true that we take on plenty of behaviors and issues from outside of ourselves. There are habits and behaviors millennia old that will not be stopped/treated/cured overnight. There is a lot of conscious effort that goes into healing those things and even more that goes into applying that at a larger scale. There is also effort in remembering what we are capable of handling ourselves and finding our path and responsibility on this journey. As trite as it may sound, at the end of the day all we can do is keep going. There is no pause or stop on this life—we just keep going. We adapt, we move forward, we find ways to do our best. Letting go of the despair only helps us to keep moving forward.
The Intentional Dreamer 