You know what you want to do. Deep down part of you knows exactly what you’re going to be, what you want to do with your life. It knows. It really really knows. And it knows it will be fulfilling and you’ll be good at it. And it doesn’t worry about money because it knows the money will follow.
It’s always known.
So, tell me, or more importantly, tell yourself…what are you going to do? Who are you going to be?
I’ve been feeling a little uncertain about my career and purpose lately (read: since college) so this quote, shared in my Desire Map Book Club Facebook group, really resonated with me. I read it and felt like it was written just for me. If you’ve been feeling uncertain or anxious, I hope you find comfort in it too.
Sending so much love,
Joanna
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
We were driving back from the grocery store and I was daydreaming about when we have a house someday and have family and friends over for meals all the time. Our home is cozy and welcoming and we always have people around, always feel loved.
We drove by the Cathedral and I noticed a man taking a picture. I looked and saw the Cathedral lit by a setting sun. It was sad and beautiful. In that moment I got nostalgic for the life we have now.
I think the emotions of this moment were enhanced by this song that happened to be playing on the radio, Trace Adkins’ You’re Gonna Miss This:
Before she knows it she’s a brand new bride
In her one bedroom apartment and her daddy stops by
He tells her it’s a nice place, she says, It’ll do for now
Starts talkin’ about babies and buyin’ a house
Daddy shakes his head and says, Baby, just slow down
Cuz’ you’re gonna miss this
You’re gonna want this back
You’re gonna wish these days
Hadn’t gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you’re gonna miss this
I know I’ll miss this place and this time when we move away. Miss the hustle and bustle of the city. The beauty of the National Mall and my favorite drive down Rock Creek Parkway along the water. I’ll miss the lazy weekend mornings at home, breakfast at the coffee table and the huge windows that greet me when I walk in the door. I’ll miss the days of just the two of us. I imagine I’ll look back on this as a time when life was simple and easy, when our cares were minimal.
But I still yearn for a future time when I don’t feel as isolated. When our weekends are filled with family and friends around our table and our house is filled with the warmth that comes with a home-cooked meal.
And so I feel sad. Sad because in yearning for that, I’m wishing this time away.
But I guess the good news is that now is good and then will also be good.
I designated June as the “Month of Me” and spent the month relaxing, reading, cooking, having fun. I told myself I’d take June to relax and take a break from the go-go-go-go-go schedule that’s dominated my life since before high school and then hit July with gusto and dive head first into my business.
June was so great. I was really enjoying myself. And then July came along.
I’m not kidding, July 1 I started to feel sad. The sadness came up and up, just kind of lingering under the surface. I didn’t know where it was coming from. Things were and are good. But this underlying feeling of sadness was there and kept growing.
When we got back from vacation, the feelings of sadness got more intense and soon turned to overwhelming anxiety.
I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Then I thought, hmm, this started around July right at the end of the Month of Me, I should start playing more and having more fun. So I did that. It worked a little bit but wasn’t a magic bullet.
This morning it hit me. The Month of Me was great not because of the play and the joy I felt. The reason the Month of Me was so wonderful was because of the lack of pressure.
That’s it. The lack of pressure.
Because I took the pressure off myself and allowed myself to oh, I don’t know, just live my life, I was able to ENJOY my life. To have fun. To do things I like.
I let myself relax in June and then slammed the pressure back on July 1. And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
The pressure I feel is 100% self inflicted. I am my own worst critic and put so much pressure on myself, beat myself up. And that sucks the joy out of things.
Knowing that my joy is tied to the amount of pressure I (and/or Janice) put on myself, I can start to examine the pressure and question it. Acknowledge it, think about it, and then allow myself to let it go and relax and enjoy my life.
Things always get done. Ideas always come. I don’t need to be thinking about my goals and my business success every. single. second. In fact, when I’m enjoying my life and doing things that make me feel like me, I’m more creative and motivated and things get done.
To relaxing and enjoying life! Cheers!
Do you put pressure on yourself? How do you let it go or could you let it go?
I’ve been struggling lately. Anxiety at an all-time high. Panic attacks. Weeping like I’ve never wept before (though that seems to have subsided, thankfully). I actually didn’t even realize that what I’ve been experiencing is anxiety because the dry mouth, night sweats, lack of appetite in the morning, and crazy intense feeling in my solar plexus that I’ve been having are not my usual anxiety symptoms.
That’s why I haven’t posted in a while.
I googled “anxiety cures” the other day, and after finding a bunch of random things that were both a little tempting and a little scary/seemingly scammy, I came across this article. Charlie says that he cured his anxiety through play.
“Huh,” I thought. “That’s interesting.”
Why not try it? What do I have to lose? I could use a little more fun in my life.
This begs the question…
What does play mean to me?
I talked to my coach about it and here’s what I’ve come up with:
I’m trying to think of more things and add more play into my life. I’m not going to lie, sometimes thinking about play fires up my anxiety. It scares me a little bit. It’s almost like I’m afraid of what might come up when I settle in and let myself enjoy it.
It’s funny, my friend Allie and I went on a hike yesterday and then settled in with a bottle of wine at a nearby vineyard. Immediately I started to feel guilty. Like I shouldn’t be doing this. I should be working or doing something. I told Allie that I felt like I didn’t deserve this goodness, this relaxation. She said “But you do. Doesn’t everyone?” I nodded and thought “of course.”
So that’s what I’m working on lately. Learning how to play. Learning how to settle in and let myself enjoy.
What does play mean to you? What activities allow you to relax and feel joy?
I often wake up thinking “what should I do this morning?” and on weekends it’s “what should I do today?”
These questions make me feel totally overwhelmed and set me up for failure.
This is essentially like asking “what am I supposed to do today?” OR “what pressure can I put on myself today?” OR “what obligations can I create for myself today so that when I inevitably don’t do them all I feel bad about myself?”
In response, I’ll start to think about all the things I could do: chores, business tasks, people to call, things that I should do because I live in the city and I should take advantage of them. And then I think about all the reasons why I don’t want to do those things or why I can’t do those things.
It’s pretty terrible actually. It makes me feel terrible and almost paralyzed.
I realized this morning that I do the same with blogging.
I’ll think “what should I write about today?”
Then I start listing possible topics followed by the reasons they’re not the right post for the day or why I can’t or don’t feel like writing that today. And then I just shutdown and don’t write anything.
In my opinion weekends should not be about shoulds.
And blogging shouldn’t either.
So I’ve come up with two new questions:
What would I like to do today/right now? | What would I like to share on the blog today?
Are there areas of your life where you’re asking questions like these? If so, where and what’s a new question you can ask yourself?
P.S. Part of the reason these questions give me so much trouble: Janice has a field day with them.
This is Janice. She looks pretty cute, right? Yeah, don’t let that fool you. She can be vicious.
Janice represents the little voice in my head that tries to keep me small. She says that I’m not good enough, I’m not doing enough. She says that perfect is the only way. That I can do more, be more.
She can be so loud and so convincing. And she means well. She wants to protect me and make sure I live up to my potential. But if I listened to everything Janice said, I wouldn’t step into my greatness, into my power.
We all have a Janice.
IPEC (my coaching school) calls this your Gremlin.
Martha Beck calls this your inner lizard.
Others call this your inner critic.
Regardless of what you call it, it’s that voice in your head that just. won’t. shut. up. The one that says you’re not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough. That you’ll never be able to land your dream job, that you’ll be single forever, that you’ll never have enough money.
It’s like a little devil on your shoulder.
Giving your gremlin a name is the first step in overcoming the blocks that your gremlin creates.
Want to take the first step in overcoming your gremlin? Give him/her/it a name and persona. That way, when you hear the voice, you can recognize it for what it is.
Want to go deeper? The Calm Your Inner Critic Process might be perfect for you.
In a recent interview, I was asked: “Do you love who you’ve become?” My response was “I don’t believe I’ve become anyone, I’ve just released all that was blocking me from who I really am.” ~Gabrielle Bernstein, May Cause Miracles
I read this and thought YES! This is my journey!
Trying to release all that’s blocking me from who I really am is exactly the process I’m going through right now. It’s certainly not easy. I feel vulnerable. There’s a lot of fear here. And fear can make you grip on tightly to things that are familiar regardless of how well they serve you.
Some things that are blocking me:
guilt | fear | lack of boundaries | limiting beliefs | my inability to say no
So it’s a process.
But I’m ready to let my true light shine all the time. Not just when I feel safe to do so. I do love the person I am underneath it all and I’m slowly growing my courage and letting go of all the things that keep her small.
What are some things that may be blocking you from who you really are?
A while ago I wrote about going at your own pace in life and not comparing where you’re at with others.
It hit me this morning that we often struggle to find a good pace within ourselves, that this conflict is often an internal one.
As I mentioned in this post last week, I really want some down time right now. I’m really happy with that realization and am enjoying the space I’m giving myself.
But as I went out for a walk this morning, I thought “oh, I should email so-and-so” and “I need to look over that page on my website.” I’ve also had thoughts like “I want to read this book” and “I want to write that post” and “I want to reach out to this group.”
One part of me is like enjoy this time, space is good, relaxing will help you create. The other part of me is more cautious and saying “go, go, go” and “do, do, do,” fearful that if I don’t take action, if I don’t think about these things every single minute, that nothing will happen.
It’s hard to go at your own pace, what I’d call your soul pace, when there’s that voice in your head saying “hello, what are you doing?”
Here’s how I’m going to handle it: I’m going to keep going at the pace my soul wants to go while acknowledging the voice in my head by saying: “I know you’re looking out for me and want to make sure I get what I want. Thank you for that. But trust me, I know it’s coming. This pace is just fine.”
What I want in my life right now, more than anything, is time for me. Time to lay in bed and look out the window. Time to cook delicious meals for myself and my husband. Time to read and read and read some more.
I want to get my nails done. I want to go to the grocery store. I want to go to yoga and really feel my body. I want to be home. I want to do laundry. I want to make dinner with my husband and dance in the kitchen. I want to be so in the moment that tears come to my eyes.
I want to remember. I want my mind to drift back to 7-up in CCD, to remember when Mike picked me up from the SATs and brought me a double cheeseburger from McDonalds.
I want time for deep reflection. For learning. For creating. For being.
So even as I work full-time and try to build a business on the side, I’m allowing myself to slow down. Because I suspect that giving myself this time and space will actually attract more of what I want into my life and may actually get me to peace, happiness, and freedom more quickly.
