**Disclaimer. This is a tough love post. But please know, it is out of love. It’s out of love for the person that you are, and the person that you can be. I write it because I believe in you – because I believe these things for you and I only want you to succeed. Because I was there, and I came out of it, and I know that you can too!
I’ve been talking a lot lately about change, and creativity, and how the most simplistic form of creativity is creating the life that you want. But there haven’t been steps. I haven’t given action items.
It’s not because I didn’t know what it was.
It’s not because I didn’t know how to say it.
It’s not because I was afraid of telling you because I’d be giving away my secret.
It’s because the first “step” is the hardest.
It’s because the first “step” is the bravest.
It’s because it is a hard truth. In the my-dad-was-a-drill-sargeant-way and that’s-how-I-learned-love kind of way.
It’s because the first “step” is not something that anyone can give you.
The hardest thing for people to admit to themselves is that something isn’t working. In the life that you’ve created, you have your comforts, and the things that are important to you. And then you have your dreams. The “one-days” and the “what-ifs” and the “if-onlys”.
You have these places in your mind that you go that make you excited and you see yourself happy, and living with passion and fire. These places that “exist” in some non-existent future.
The future is not a place. It is not a time. It is a fantasy. If it were a place, you could travel there. Right now. But as it is, it’s only imagination that gives us our future. And the steps that we take to get there. (More on that here)
So, we imagine these beautiful futures for ourselves, full of all the possibilities, where we are happy and our most beautiful selves, and then we come back to our comfortable lives, and we sit, and we watch them happen, and we don’t take any steps to change because it isn’t time yet. Because it’s scary. Because we’re comfortable. Because we don’t have time. Because, what if we fail?
It’s the same with living inside a life that we don’t want, a life that drains us, depresses us, that constantly calls us to numb ourselves. We know, in the back of our minds, that this isn’t it. This isn’t the life that we want. We know that something has to change because we can’t keep living this way. It’s stagnant and mundane. It’s complacent. And yet, it’s comfortable.
We know what is coming tomorrow. We know where our money is coming from, our food, our company, our time, our love, our comfort. There are no questions. It’s not scary. It’s not our forever, but it’s our for now.
Do you know how many times I’ve said those words to placate myself?
I’ve been in so many situations where my body knew it wasn’t right, I could feel it in my gut, my intuition, my mind, and my heart. All telling me that this, this wasn’t it. But it was my “for now”. Change will come when I’m ready. When it won’t rock the boat. When I’m more financially stable. When I’m more emotionally stable. When I’m married and supported. When the boys are living their life and don’t have to be dragged around by mine.
Those were excuses. They were reasons to not leave my comfort. They were reasons to keep living every day with that pit in my stomach and my mind on bigger and better things, constantly numbing out the everyday.
I want to be clear. Life looks different for everyone. One person’s dream might be running a major company, while another’s dream is to live in the middle of nowhere and not have anything except the earth under their feet. There is no right or wrong dream – as long as you are not physically hurting yourself or others, and you’re still able to be healthy. So, there is absolutely no judgement on what lights you up. As long as it LIGHTS YOU UP!
I wasn’t living every day with that feeling in my stomach, or my heart. I would keep myself busy, and when I wasn’t busy I would keep myself loud. Not in the sense that I ran around screaming, but there was always noise – the phone, the tv, the computer, the to do’s. There was never stillness or silence because if that existed, it meant that I was slowing down enough to actually think about my life and what I wanted and how this wasn’t it.
And something happened. That feeling in my stomach went away. My heart stopped dreaming. I wasn’t only complacent, but I was also quieting the part of myself that knew I deserved better. I wasn’t trusting myself. I was disrespecting myself.
We all have that part of ourselves. We all have a cheerleader inside of us that lights on fire whenever we do something amazing. We have a soul’s purpose. Something that we were created to do. But that cheerleader gets more and more disheartened each time you choose to quiet them. They stop showing up. Until we forget. We don’t know what lights us on fire anymore. We don’t remember our soul’s purpose. We become so distant from what we were created to do. And it hurts.
So.
What is the first step? How do we finally lift the veil of our comfort, of our sadness, of our routine, and our numbness?
We get ready for change. We get ready to be uncomfortable. We know in our hearts, in the seemingly quietest place, that (to quote one of my mom’s favourite movies) something’s gotta give.
And that is the hardest part. Admitting to ourselves that we need something different. And not only need, but DESERVE.
You deserve something better.
And once you recognize that, suddenly, you are more open to change. You are more open to being uncomfortable. And that cheerleader will come back and start to tell you your soul’s purpose again. You will feel the fire again. The fire that you feel when you are being your more authentic self. Who you were created to be.
In my post, What is Creativity, I list out ways to quiet your mind, release stress, and to get into the flow of allowing what you deserve to come to you. To start imagining again, dreaming again. To allow yourself to feel that spice of life. Because life is spicy. It is so good. What we have been given is so beautiful.
So, I hope that this weekend, a weekend of thankfulness and gratefulness, you are able to honour yourself. To take the first step. The hardest step. BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT.
Crooked Cedar Collective 