“When presence is expected but not protected {we think} maybe they’ll see me if I love them hard enough but here’s the truth about that: no amount of over functioning will make the emotionally unavailable show up. No amount of loyalty will make the unstable feel safe to love.  No connection is worth keeping if it constantly costs you your clarity, confidence, or your sanity,” Jay Douglas.  This is the truth for every relationship we have but it speaks highly to the relationship we have with ourselves.  The way society functions (perhaps human nature) is that we have to adhere to these unwritten, often unspoken rules of how we interact, what we expect, what we are supposed to look like, how we are supposed to behave in certain environments.  That includes everything down to the way we look up to the things we are willing to say.  We train ourselves to run ragged on the whims of others with the hopes they will reciprocate something and we end up over functioning to compensate for what they are unwilling to give and what we were unwilling to give to ourselves. 

When we have people in our lives who treat us this way, we need to understand it has nothing to do with us.  Their inability to see our worth is a matter of their blinders, not our ability to live up to their expectations.  We only need to live up to our own.  It isn’t fair for anyone to have to be what someone else wants over their own desires and we create the freedom we want in our lives by doing what is in our hearts.  We have to understand that our presence and connection to source and ourselves is more important than the connections we hope to have with people.  Real connection is forged from an understanding of the spirit/soul within individuals, not our ability to contort ourselves into what someone thinks makes them happy for that moment.  Those types of relationships are fleeting and they are easy to fall into because some of us are so engrained with people pleasing and seeking validation that we are able to be what anyone wants.  But that isn’t real love. That isn’t reciprocity.  That isn’t a relationship—that is making ourselves a source of entertainment for someone else.

Learn to be ok with disappointing people.  Let them be disappointed.  We aren’t their children and if someone isn’t happy with our actions that’s no indication of our value as people.  We are here to sort out that relationship with our purpose, not to be responsible for someone else’s.  It can get confusing because I do believe with my heart that we are also here to help each other as our skills, wants, and abilities are complementary.  We were born with the inherent ability to help each other move forward in life.  We’ve gotten so consumed with competition and being number one that we feel like we have to put our needs first.  No ones desires outweigh someone’s needs, nor is it our responsibility to fulfill what someone refuses to do for themselves.  It isn’t our responsibility to tolerate what someone deems we are worthy for.  We are here to build a life, an existence that is meaningful to us, to fulfill our purpose.  It is only in doing that where we find fulfillment.  Don’t waste our time with people who don’t appreciate or respect that and certainly don’t waste time that don’t appreciate or respect us.  Walk away because the sacrifice if all that keeps us who we are isn’t worth it.            

“They cause the fire but then they get offended when you walk out of the smoke, when you finally choose you, not for applause or out of spite, but because your nervous system is tired of calling survival love.  Choosing peace when you’ve been through emotional warfare isn’t selfish it’s CPR,” Jay Douglas.  I have a group of people I’ve considered friends for a little over 3 years now and the relationships have dramatically shifted.  I always thought friendship meant making other people happy to keep them around even if that meant bending to the point of breaking or sacrificing what really couldn’t be sacrificed.  Giving time, energy, effort, and attention to people who I would be there for at the drop of a hat but couldn’t be found when the water was raging in.  Recently the group took another turn and I’ve found myself on the outs with them, this time I believe for good.  And here’s the thing: everyone feels like a victim at some point, I know that.  We can all play victim all we want.  But when I was working through the list of things I wanted to address to get some understanding between us, the realization hit me that friends wouldn’t require an explanation that this is bad behavior and they would have stopped the first time a friend raised an issue.  That isn’t what happened.  And then I heard today’s quote.

I realized that this has been a pattern for me: always finding a way to make it work, even things that really shouldn’t work.  I’ve always bent to accommodate what other people wanted because I thought my role was to make other people happy.  I was raised and treated with the belief that if I got upset when someone crossed a boundary I was a bitch and I was a bitch if I raised my voice to express what I wanted.  But then the pattern shifted to me being a bitch because I SET the boundary.  I confused that with ego, thinking that I was too egotistical because I set the boundary and then I’d let people walk over it and get hurt and they’d get mad if I said I was hurt.  So I struggled to find balance and in this group I thought I had found some semblance of acceptance and understanding until the pattern started to repeat itself.  This time I didn’t quiet down.  I’d bent myself silly and finally said something and when they got mad, I didn’t bend again.  I realized that not only had they started the fire, there were times I’d gone so far as to set the fire FOR them and they still looked at me like I was the problem.  I could have done EVERYTHING for these people and, at the end of the day, they still would have found some issue with me setting that boundary/being who I am.

I went through an exercise writing a letter to work through this, unsure if I would give it to them.  The first draft was really angry and it bit—it also hit on all the points where I was still tender from their shots.  I then went soft, trying to find where I was responsible for this miscommunication as well and trying to find a way to make it work.  The third attempt was somewhere in between, voicing my concerns clearly while acknowledging my part.  But what was funny in that third attempt is that as I was listing out all of the things I wanted to discuss/get understanding of, it hit me like a lead balloon that I wouldn’t have to explain this to friends and friends wouldn’t have done all of this stuff in the first place.  All of the red flags I’d looked past for the last 3 years, the lies, the exclusion from tons of events after I’d fought to bring them in my life, the disregard for my/my family’s feelings while their feelings were law…none of that goes on between friends.  So the question became why am I trying to salvage these relationships with people who don’t give a shit let alone standing so close to the fire after they poured the kerosene? 

That is a pattern I’m ok with breaking.  Sure there are some implications for my son because he is friends with some of their kids, but I need to be an example that self-respect isn’t about making ourselves convenient, it’s about being who we are even if it makes others uncomfortable.  It’s about telling people what we are/aren’t willing to accept in our presence and knowing our value.  Value means more than what we are willing to give up for someone else—value is knowing when to walk away from those who seek the chaos, those who fan the flames, those who light the match and then wonder why you ran.  I’ve struggled with these decisions over the last several weeks but the truth is, when we look at the reality of the situation and understand that people who care about each other don’t treat each other like this, then it makes it all the easier to walk away.  Sure, I can own my part in the pieces where I could be a better friend but I was never malicious even if I was sloppy/forgetful at times.  As I gave grace to them, I had hoped they would do the same for me but that didn’t happen.  And that is ok.  I don’t have to be everyone’s cup of tea.  I’ve learned to carry my own and I will carry on.  And I am ok. As Jay Douglas says, “I don’t need you to understand why I left because I’m done explaining my boundaries to people who only respected me when I had none.”

“You can’t sustain actions that directly conflict with how you see yourself,” Success Insider.  This is a reminder that we can tell ourselves we are a certain thing but if we aren’t that way (or don’t really feel/believe we are that way), our mind will fight us every step of the way toward that vision. That explanation may sound a bit defeatist but it gives me hope in a way because it makes sense from a neuropsych perspective.  If we don’t have the pathways in our brain that tells us or is familiar with the action we are trying to accomplish, we will default to what we know.  The other reference in this is that we can say things like, “I’m a millionaire” over and over again but if we automatically think of our bank account and know it isn’t at that level, then we fall back into the patterns we have of NOT being a millionaire.  That may be an oversimplification to a degree but the point is valid: if we don’t FEEL what we see in our being, we will never see it in our reality.  We have to become what we want to bring in what we want.

With time and focus we can shift the way the brain thinks—that is part of the concept of neuroplasticity.  We can shift our neural pathways to create new beliefs.  But if we don’t match actions to those beliefs, we will end up in the same position we were in at the beginning.  We can’t start new things when we repeat the same pattern.  We can’t change if we don’t change.  Until we believe AND do the work to change how we feel/act/view ourselves, we will always fall back on the path of least resistance to what we do know.  It takes time and patience but it also takes focus and belief.  Building a new vision and becoming something that matches it so we can bring it into reality requires work.  When we start to see the results of those changes, we start to form those pathways and the more we walk those pathways, the more they are a part of us.  I will NEVER claim the work is easy but I will always remind us that it IS doable.  Simple isn’t easy, discipline isn’t easy, but consistency is key.  Start small and keep going and eventually we will become that vision.      

Anna Kai: “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got is that no one is ever going to ask you if they can do more for you if you don’t tell them they’re not doing enough; If you’re telling your man it’s fine, they’re going to assume it’s fine, because men don’t fix problems they don’t think exist; That goes for everything in life, people love low maintenance friends, low maintenance partners, low maintenance employees because it means they get to do the bare minimum and still look like a hero. And we accept the bare minimum because we would rather be loved and starving than a bitch that’s fed.  People will keep underdelivering if you keep overcompensating. Took me 34 years to realize that the key to getting what you want in life is not by being loved, but by being loud. Because you don’t get points for being easy, you get forgotten.  And if nothing else today, I’m just here to say rest in not peace to the years where I tried to be the kind of woman someone would want because now I’m the kind of woman who gets what she wants.”   There is so much to say on this piece yet I find myself searching for words.  We have to learn to be ok with whatever people think about us because that is only a perception of a tiny fraction of a minute percentage of the world.  How we feel and operate is what determines what we get out of the universe and if we are constantly telling the universe that we have enough that we got it, we will never get more and we will constantly shoulder the burdens of, well,… the universe.

I think the nuance of Anna’s words is important.  It can be taken literally to the point of being a total bitch and doing whatever it takes to get what we want but it can also simply be that we need to give voice to what’s on our minds.  As I shared from Sarai Speer yesterday, misplaced humility has long term consequences on the nervous system up to and including the habit/tendency to overcompensate for those who underdeliver.  Humility isn’t a bad thing but when that is our knee jerk reaction and we misinterpret silence as humble, we lose our autonomy to those who will speak for us because they think we can’t.  We were given brains to generate ideas and voices to share them and bodies to execute them so I’m not sure where along the line it was told/believed that it was better to do as we were told than as we knew.  There was a point when we found out that being quiet was better and safer than making noise and we took that into our DNA.  We’ve evolved long past that lizard brain where we’re afraid of being eaten because we make a little peep yet we still behave that way.  If we want to get what we want, the universe doesn’t know what that is until we give voice to it.  I don’t believe it is up to others to fix our problems but I do believe it takes two to tango and if there is an issue then we need to somehow find that balance between reasonable expression and appropriate delivery as well as discretion as to whose problem it really is (ie, is this something for that person to fix or is this just something I WANT them to fix).  There is enough space in this world for us all to get what we want, we don’t need to be assholes to get it. 

So to the latter and former points about not being an asshole while keeping our voices strong enough to speak when needed and HEARD, using our voice is a gift that does have responsibility behind it.  Use our voices intentionally and often.  Let the humility we feel come from the fact that we GET the opportunity to be heard and that we CAN be heard, not when someone deigns that you’re worthy of it.  Don’t let someone choose the moments we step up as the moments we quiet down.  We have a voice and every much the same right to use it.  We don’t need to be a bitch to get what we want but we sure as hell have every right to be a bitch when someone tells us we can’t have what we want or that we need to prove/earn it.  We are all worthy just because we are here—we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have a purpose, and because we have a purpose written on our souls, we don’t need anything else.  So we don’t need to waste any time trying to be a picture of what someone else wants to be in order to prove that we deserve what we want.  And the things we want are no indication of our value in someone else’s eyes.  We have a purpose and a point and a voice that we are meant to use to get there.  If someone consistently tries to shut us down or shut us up, ask the question of what don’t they want someone to hear?  How are we disrupting their story?  Then we need to let them do their thing because even if we are changing a story they tell themselves, that doesn’t mean ours is any less valid.  Speak the life we want into existence. 

“They mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death,” Oscar Wilde.  I wrote about the importance of love in my gratitude a little over a week ago. The concept of love amazes me the more I look into it.  For a word we all know and apply to so many things on a daily basis, we really don’t know a lot about it.  We understand it conceptually—like we all know when we love something—but experientially it’s different to everyone.  Books on love language and the chemical traits of it and the science behind it the emotion of it flood the market and we study it all the time for different reasons, from different angles, and in so many different ways.  We’ve created holidays for it, we have cards for it, we buy each other gifts for it.  But when it comes down to it, no matter how we all feel it, none of us can really explain it.  Buddhism and other religions talk about love being the key to what makes the world go round.  Why is that?  My feelings have always been big—when I love, I LOVE, when I’m angry, I’m ANGRY, when something bothers me, I am BOTHERED big time.  I feel the emotion and then I let it pass.  Some stay longer than others but I never cling to it. Something about getting older and witnessing the fragility of life has shifted some perspective for me. I feel better when I’m sitting with that love state than I have previously—things seem easier. 

The ease I felt in that moment felt different than before and really got me thinking–and something clicked: this is what it means for things to flow in love state.  Love encompasses this understanding that allows things to be and moves them along as it should, it’s an acceptance of what is.  I’ve tried to articulate that understanding previously but it wasn’t quite what I wanted to say.  Flow is love, understanding is love, but more than that, acceptance is love.  That acceptance sends the vibration to the universe that we trust, that nothing needs to change, that we are aligned and with what we need in that moment.  Love isn’t necessarily blind acceptance because we often love things and that need some guidance, but love does provide those guiderails.  It is accepting the nature of what is and learning to work with it rather than force it to be what we want it to be.  Love isn’t a weapon or a tool, it is a way of being.  It’s in that way that we can truly experience love for all things and that is something we can only understand through experience.  Love also provides peace because we aren’t fighting against what is–love is life.  We are embraced in the moment, not trying to create anything else and presence is something we still undervalue in this society. We all want it, we all want presence and peace but we struggle to do what it takes to have those things—and all we have to do is understand what it actually means to love.   

I want to go a bit deeper into that meaning: I propose love is what keeps us from death BECAUSE it is what gives life meaning.  It is a marker of the soul and the human experience and perhaps it leaves a mark on the soul. When we ask how to be better and make things right, that all comes from how to love better.  Love creates connection and it is the connection we’re all looking for.  The human mind gets muddled up sometimes and we confuse what different chemicals in our body mean—lust v. love, anger v. fear, etc.  We don’t always understand the reality of what we’re feeling yet many people spend such an inordinate amount of time thinking of what’s next rather than being present with where we are now.  Instead of asking what happens tomorrow or even when this physical manifestation is gone, we can’t  forget the key how to live well right here and now.  And that is with love.  Let’s go back to that love state/flow and how when we are in a love state, things flow easily.  I’m the first to admit I’m not in that state every day.  Watch me when someone cuts me off while driving and you’ll see real quick that I am anything but accepting of that moment and love is far from the picture.  I try to remember as quickly as I can in those moments that whatever I’m feeling right then is an energy and it has an impact on what I receive from the universe.  If that’s true then that carries over into the every day life as well—what we feel can determine what we get.   

Love is an energy source—it carries a charge like anything else we do.  The emotion is a result of very specific chemical flow in our brains combined with an impulse.  While I wrote my section on gratitude for love, it hit me how many different kinds of love there are based on what we’re talking about.  The love we feel for a person isn’t the same as the love we feel for our favorite chair but we’re using the same word to describe it.  Sure, both provide some level of comfort and we’re saying it’s love, but that love is different—I wouldn’t die for my chair but I would for my child.  It’s different means to the same dopamine/oxytocin hit.  I love a simple answer to things and the chemical/electrical state of the brain creating a feeling makes the most sense.  When I witnessed my grandmother dying, she still said thing while unconscious/in a stupor.  I saw in that moment that we are a little more than a series of electrical impulses in a meat bag.  I’m not saying that disrespectfully—frankly I say it in awe.  Even as we shut down, our impulses still trigger and we have no conscious awareness of what we’re saying/experiencing but that is based on how we lived and what we believed, the input we gave our brains our entire lives.  On her death bed she said things like, “You better fix it or I’ll fix you!” and I immediately saw her when she was younger yelling at my mom and uncles that way.  So that led me to believe that we have control over how we view the world because that is how she viewed the world when she was alive and that was the message she shared with her kids—she believed that was how kids should be raised and it still fired through her brain at the end.  Fast forward to last weekend and that information combined with the feeling of flow made me understand how we very much have control over how we feel and our responses to the world.  Stay open, be curious, and learn to work with the true source—love.  We have a choice to see and experience the world any way we want so choose to see it in its highest possibility.   

Today I am grateful for life.  Life isn’t easy and there are daily reminders how precious and fleeting this existence can be.  I attended a memorial yesterday for a long time family friend’s mother (she was essentially a bonus grandmother to me).  I’ve been to hundreds of memorials in my life for all sorts of people under all sorts of circumstances and the thing that always strikes me is the fragility of it all.  Like one piece of the puzzle is missing and we are all present and witness to the fact that this person is no longer here, we all feel a degree of emptiness, all of our lives are changed…but what now?  It’s always a matter of finding peace and moving forward.  Of accepting what we thought we couldn’t accept.  It’s witnessing the people we saw as the strongest figures in our lives losing the person that was THEIR strongest figure and suddenly we see the frailty of it all.  It doesn’t matter how old we are, when we lose that presence in our lives, we lose a piece of our identity.  So we still work to find this balance between loving life and being present all while valuing what is important but not being attached.  It’s no small feat.  But I am 100% certain that one way to keep that progress in the journey toward balance is to honor those we love and cherish the time we have with them while they are here.  Honor the time we have here.  Live the life we are meant to live for the sake of the gift of life.    

Today I am grateful for laughter.  Genuine belly laughs with people we love is one of the most healing things we can do.  Sometimes we need that reminder that it’s ok to let go and to simply enjoy the moment—or even just to sit with the craziness of a particular situation where all you can do is laugh.  When my son was only a few months old we had gotten a new stroller the day before I was to take my mom to the eye doctor.  I knew how to open it and I was all good to go with getting him set in it but when we left, I couldn’t figure out how to collapse it to get it back in the car.  I thought I did—but I didn’t.  So my mom had her eyes dilated, I have a 5 month old in the back seat and I’m freaking out that I don’t know how to collapse this damn thing to get it back in the car.  My mom tried helping and I was cursing everyone under the sun because I couldn’t figure this out.  I remember I screamed one last curse out in frustration and my mom and I went silent and looked at each other….and busted up laughing.  Dealing with life is like that.  There will always be something we aren’t quite sure how to do that we thought we had an understanding of and then life throws us a curveball.  Life, loss, love, all of it requires a sense of humor and trust.  If we have some people we can still laugh with regardless of what we have been through, we are truly fortunate.   

Today I am grateful for knowing what’s for me.  We ran into someone from many years past at an event recently.  Normally I’m uncomfortable or awkward in those situations—how do they remember me, do they really remember me, they were part of x crowd so who are we now that we are adults?  Regardless, this individual started talking about other people from that same crowd from over two decades ago and instead of feeling awkward or longing for some sort of inclusion, I felt completely secure in not needing to know anything about these people.  I fully accepted and understood that they knew a version of me then and we haven’t spoken in over two decades so they have no clue who I am now or what I went through to get to where I’m at now—I’m not going to collapse into that girl trying to impress people, hoping they like her when you were on the periphery of my life anyway.  You don’t know me now and if you had any interest in knowing me, we’d have stayed in touch along the way.  You would have been part of my journey.  I made it here on my own and I don’t have any desire to go back, to rehash those moments.  I’m proud, I’m aware, I’m comfortable letting that part of my past go. 

Today I am grateful for genuine bonding with people who know us.  While at the memorial, it was fascinating to hear from our loved one’s friends, sharing stories from the past and how they formed and the lives they lived.  It was so cool to see a different facet of who they are and how their curiosity brought them together, how common interests kept them going, and how mutual support got them through various moments in their lives.  It was awesome to hear how they didn’t let some of the darkest moments in life define them.  They used those moments to figure out how to help others.  They created systems of support for people who’d had similar experiences and they made contributions to life and made sure to live life to the fullest every opportunity they got.  Seeing the genuine sisterhood between women who were not of the same blood but loved each other stronger than that made me ever more grateful for my best friend as well—because she needed me to hold space for her and I did and in that space we filled it with our own memories and laughter and I know that is something I will carry with me forever.

Today I am grateful for communication.  No one is meant to spend their life silent.  We communicate in so many different ways—sometimes we communicate when we don’t think we do or we think we have communicated and we’ve really done nothing.  Words are beautiful to me and I love using them.  I love the stories and the lilt and the dance and the sound of them.  I love the sound of the keyboard as I type the words in my head.  For all the ways we have to communicate with each other, we are kind of crappy at it.  Communicating takes a lot of practice and intention.  We are born without words yet we let the entire world know what we need.  We just need to hone that as we get older.  Never lose that voice, never lose that skill.  Always believe.  We have a voice for a reason and we are given a brain to create ideas to be conveyed through that voice.  We have a body that speaks for us, we have eyes that tell every story we’ve ever experienced.  We see it and if we take our time with it we can get really good at letting people know what we mean.  And when we say what we mean and mean what we say then it starts to get good. Some people aren’t comfortable experiencing direct communication because it feels like an attack in a world that tells us the truth is violent.  But I am so grateful to use these skills to get to the root. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“You attract damaged people because your energy feels like safety in a world that’s starving for it, not because you’re broken, but because you’ve done the work they’re still avoiding.  But ask yourself this: Is it connection or another attempt at rescue?  You keep handing out your spark to people who treat it like a battery pack.  That’s not love, that’s slow self-destruction.  Protecting your peace isn’t selfish, it’s clarity.  Let go of what drains, flow toward what reflects, let them come whole or not at all,” Kristoffer William.  This is a nice addition to moving with intention.  The human creature seeks connection and if we aren’t intentional with our energy we have potential to attract people who will take advantage and manipulate.  This is also next level when it comes to healing.  Once we get to the point where we know we need to shift course and letting go of the crap is the next step, that sets people off.  The people who were only present because we carried the energy they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) manage start to panic because they see they won’t be able to shift their energy onto us anymore.  The ones who were fine as long as you did what they said, as long as you were there for them but never returned your call, the ones who pushed and pushed and ignored when you told them what was wrong and then were shocked when you weren’t there anymore: those are the people who get bothered when we set the boundary.  The ones who come to us because they see we are healed in a way they aren’t, and they aren’t prepared to do that work.

I know the term “damaged” affects people differently because we are all “damaged” on some level.  There is no real way to avoid that, but for our purposes in this piece, damaged includes avoidant, destructive, repetitive patterns that keep them down.  The ones who have options to solve their issues and the tools available yet still refuse to do the work.  There is absolutely no judgement about anyone’s damage—none of us get through life unscathed so we will all have some level of shit to unpack at some point.  And honestly, there is no judgement about those who aren’t ready to unpack it yet.  We know when we’re ready to deal with it in our own time.  But this is about protecting our energy and in order to do that we need to be highly aware of the energy around us and be very clear on what we allow into our lives—we have to set the boundary for what we attract.  If we have intention in our life, the work we must do is clear—and confusion either loves/attracts more confusion, or it clings to clarity whether it’s internal or not—and we know what is and isn’t the right kind of company in our lives.  So perhaps it isn’t about the damaged part.  Perhaps it’s more about those willing to convert the energy into something good.  Perhaps it’s more about finding the people who resonate with the same type of issue we’re trying to resolve and learning to work through it together. 

Aside from intention, we must know that we are worthy of achieving what we set out to.  We are worthy of saying “no” to people who only seek to use our energy for their benefit.  We are worthy of learning and redirecting our own energy as many times as it takes.  We are worthy of the connection we desire and that means there are times we will have to say no to certain connections—and we are worthy of refusing to connect to those who “use us like a battery” or those who refuse to do the work themselves, those who only want us around to serve their purpose.  I’m not saying we need to be singularly focused or selfish in achieving a goal, I will repeat that as well as it’s something we’ve spoken about often—it isn’t selfish to refuse to fulfill someone else’s demands, especially for the work they refuse to do.  We can lead a horse to water so to speak but if it continues to run away or refuses to lower its head, there comes a point we are not responsible for what happens no matter how grim.  Some people are the same and they will opt to not drink every time, saying we didn’t give them what they want to some degree—like it somehow wasn’t the right water.  It is ok to have boundaries around what our goals are and to make choices that support those goals.  There is nothing wrong with that.  We need to have enough self-awareness to know when our actions cause harm to others and we must set the boundary when others cause harm to us.  There is no reason to accept harm for the sake of others and no reason to cause harm so if we recognize that someone is causing more harm/draining (or taking) more than they should, we need to recognize it isn’t up to us to fix them—we must let them go.   

“Move through life with intention or life will consume you without hesitation,” unknown.  I heard this and wrote it down so fast I didn’t pay attention to who said it—sorry about that.  There have been consistent reminders over the last 2 weeks to slow down and move intentionally.  To pay attention to what we do and to be deliberate in our choices and actions.  To make sure that we are purposeful in what we do.  If we go through life reacting to what happens to us, we set ourselves up to be the victim more often than not.  We tell the universe that we are open to the garbage and that we will take what we can get, or worse, that we have no real purpose.  For a long time I thought that there was a point to not setting a course because it would allow us to pivot easier, it would show us other opportunities, it would give us choices.  But when we don’t set a course, we live on a superficial level allowing ourselves to be bounced around like a ping pong ball.  We become a piece in someone else’s game because our energy says that we are a bystander and open to be a tool for other things. 

Setting intentions isn’t about control.  Just because we know where we want to go, we keep room for how we get there—something we have often talked about here.  But that intention clears the path so we become aware of what will and will not get us where we want to go and what we need to be aware of along the way.  It leaves room to learn other ways of doing things while drowning out the noise of what doesn’t matter.  In an odd way, it makes us more aware of what happens around us because we become aware of what is and isn’t true.  It can be argued that intention makes us singularly focused but, just like learning to argue the opposite side to learn about something, when we set the intention, we find the things that don’t support it which either makes us learn more about it or we know we can dismiss it.  Setting intention makes us more discerning and aware, not blind to the goal.  If we don’t have a goal in mind or an end point, someone will be all too happy to put you on their path to assist them in their endgame.  I spent far too much time in my life working someone else’s path because I wanted them to be happy or to like me—I wanted to be valuable to someone.  Over time I’ve learned that we create the most value by letting our own light shine rather than dimming it so someone else can be seen.

So I will repeat my ever constant refrain again: we must know ourselves enough to understand our purpose here and fulfill it.  We are given dreams and thoughts and ideas because we are meant to do something with them. We are meant to tell stories, create, build, harness and transmute energy—we are meant to live life.  But if we float for too long, soon life will use us for other purposes.  It will take our energy and assume we weren’t using it for anything so we become a supporting character so to speak.  If we let our dreams fade then someone else will be happy to take the assist.  I want to be clear that intention isn’t about ruthlessness where we ignore people and do what we need to achieve our goals at all costs because we’ve seen time and time again that doesn’t work either.  But if we want a meaningful and purposeful life, we have to be open to what we are meant to do here.  Then the intention becomes to fulfill that purpose in a way that benefits as many people as it can.  And no, intentionality doesn’t mean our work needs a global reach or anything—sometimes that intention is to be a spark to others who will create the ripple.  We are just the wind that stirs the pond enough for someone to expand the ripple—and that is ok because we are intentionally starting the fire.  Follow the intention, believe in it, and never let ourselves drift into someone else’s wake.  Be purposeful and be light. 

“Boredom doesn’t exist when you are forever looking at the world with the desire and intention to appreciate and notice,” Radhi Devlukia.  Radhi was talking about appreciating even the smallest moments because of how it helps us slow down and appreciate what is and create presence.  With the limitless distraction available today and the heightened sense of emotional entitlement, it’s easy to look past what is good and beautiful in the world thinking we need to change it to make it better—we are always looking to make things better.  It’s easy to look at what we think we lack as if the absence is somehow greater than the presence, like the desire is stronger than the creation. We have an expectation that the world is here to entertain us on some level or to do our bidding—we have forgotten that we are part of the natural world and we are gifted the ability to work WITH the world, not force it.  What we see and how we interpret it is a reflection of our perception and we can train our perception to see things in a specific way.  We can mourn what isn’t there or we can celebrate what is.  We can lament the losses or we can take in the millions of small wonders around us at any given time. 

With the speed thing are created and shared in this world, the culture of mass marketing and shoving ideas and images down people’s throats everywhere they turn, we have a tendency to think life is all about how fast we can do it and how much we can fit in.  We don’t care about how we are living as long as we feel like we are living the MOST.  We have forgotten what life is in some ways.  There is life all around us, life within us, and when we stop to notice and really take it in, suddenly we are alive in a way that puts meaning into life—we see the meat of what is really important.  This society tends to have an expectation that the things around us give us meaning.  Sure, there are some things that do (like a letter written by a loved one or our grandmother’s wedding ring, etc.).  But the things around us are tools to bring our purpose to life—things to help us fulfill our greater reason for being.  We could literally do nothing on this planet in the way of “making it better” and still survive.  The Earth would still provide food, we could still find shelter.  We don’t have to build and cultivate and take from the Earth as we do—Sure the advancements we have made certainly make things easier and even more efficient, but no one will die for lack of internet or a TV—there are other ways to communicate/connect.  The resources we need are readily available and our job is to figure out how to share them.  We don’t have to wield power, we can work with it. So the focus should be gratitude for those gifts.

Radhi’s quote caught me because I’ve been thinking about slowing down a LOT lately.  I struggle with slowing down—it’s inherent with ADD/ADHD brain.  Zipping from topic to topic or starting a ton of projects and unable to finish them, being interested for a few seconds—that makes the brain move mighty quickly, and with no context, it isn’t about results, it’s just movement.  There have also been a lot of reminders about how fast life moves and how we tend to not understand what we have until it’s gone—I don’t want to miss out on the good stuff while it’s here.  It’s part of why I changed careers—because I need to be more present and available for the good stuff in my life rather than dealing with utter nonsense.  There is too much good to get caught up in that crap any longer.  Plus constantly perceiving and interpreting interactions with people, finding meaning, finding who we are takes a lot of energy.  It’s a lot of work to harness the power that is given to us and mix it with what is here.  To learn how to work as a co-creator with Earth and live in peace and acceptance.  Letting go and trusting that all is well how it is and knowing the times we have to steer the ship versus let go is a challenge—but it all starts with appreciating the little things.  One day we all understand the little things were the big things all along, so don’t take it for granted.