Words With Myself

Sometimes we can be so focused on our goals, dreams and aspirations, look far ahead into the future, that we miss what is right in front of us. Opportunities present themselves all the time if you are open to them, but unfortunately we miss so much of what is intended for us because we are ignoring what is in front for what we think we want.

We all want to believe that we are in control of our own lives, but often we delude ourselves into believing we are far more in control that we probably are. We are constantly at the whim of unknown variables and random circumstances that give life its beautiful unpredictability, variability and colour. The more we convince ourselves we are in control and the less we are able to surrender to happenstance, the greater levels of anxiety we are likely to experience. Control and an obsession with outcome are the very heart of anxiety.

The unknown is something many of us fear, but it is also something we love to use in order to protect ourselves from pain. We leverage it as a coping mechanism in order to avoid confronting the trauma that we have accumulated over our lifetimes, but is it really better not to know? In what ways are the things you are choosing not to confront and interrogate harming you?

Before every event that has led to a major shift or progression in my life, I always feel the same thing before hand. Resistance. Doubt, fear and anxiety all creep in and test my mettle, they challenge me to rise up to the occasion and present the opportunity to overcome them. This resistance has become my key indicator for something which I know I need to do, because I only feel that level of resistance towards things I really know that I want or need to do.

What will be will be. As someone who is typically goal oriented and hyper-focused on finding solutions and fixing things, the idea of surrender terrifies me. I like to trick myself into believing I have far more control than in reality I really do. Sometimes it is only when we stop fighting, stop resisting and accept what is, that the answers we seek will come to us.

As humans progress and globalization begins to dramatically shift how society operates, I feel like some incredibly valuable things are being lost in the process. We have become more connected than ever yet also more individual, we are individual people connected to a network of billions.

Sometimes we get caught in the trap of thinking we know how things are. Things are constantly shifting and changing yet it can be easy to get stuck in our ways and hold onto certain perceptions. Under scrutiny, a lot of these perceptions will fall apart and are contaminated with bias and individual experience. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we are limited to our own experience and that by changing our perspective we can greatly change our reality. Get out there, experience, re-evaluate your opinions, beliefs and preconceived ideas of what reality truly is.

Humans, we are all very different from one another. We have all experienced things differently, have been influenced by different things and have walked different paths. Yet sometimes we find ourselves competing in a popularity contest to validate that we are good enough, smart enough, funny enough, rich enough and fundamentally that we are worth love. If you truly love yourself and look only to yourself for validation, no one can take that away from you. How people perceive you, what people think of you and whether or not you are in peoples favor will constantly change, stability comes from within.

Preparing for the worst case scenario has it's place, but that place is not every situation you find yourself in throughout your entire life. When we are always expecting the worst, we increase our chances of that outcome occurring. It is that scenario where you plan a big trip in your car and then think how it might break down, then it does surprise surprise and we curse the universe for enacting our prophesy.

Moments of true clarity had started to become a rarity in my life, I always had something to distract me, make me feel better or otherwise dilute unwanted feelings and experiences. This year, I am dedicated to removing all the things out of my life that are reducing my clarity and clouding my true feelings and thoughts. This year will be a year of clarity.