moodybreadcrumbs

How do you decide what to push yourself towards? Typically it’s simply something you want, right? Some goal you’ve decided you want to accomplish. Something you think will bring you happiness. More often than not, it’s something that you’ve been programmed to desire. Whether it’s career success, the perfect man, the dream home, they’re all things we’ve learned to want, all things that society says we should want. They’re all sold as if they promise satisfaction. And maybe there’s something to it. Usually if something has been deeply ingrained in society, it stemmed from some truth and just veered off course somewhere along the way. Maybe these examples are just superficial representations of the truth. Maybe it’s value, connection and safety in one’s life that the career, relationship and home represent. 

So you strip away the materialistic and superficial aspect of your desires and your goals. You uncover the truth behind what you deeply desire in your life. You stopped chasing the things that were masked and you’ve clarified exactly the things that will bring joy to your life. You’ve done away with the pressure to push yourself toward things that aren’t what you truly want. That’s important. You’ve realized you don’t need to push yourself toward meaningless ventures. You’ve taken the pressure off of keeping up with the Jones’ but now what? You’ve taken away fruitless pressure and superficial goals but what do you push yourself towards to bring a feeling of value, connection and safety into our life? How do you reconcile the pressure of placing goals on aspects such as those that can’t necessarily be boiled down to specific and timely actions? An even more complex challenge is presented when you’re a person who has learned that forcing things in her life is tricky. Or maybe that’s a false belief. Maybe taking action doesn’t equate to force. Maybe taking action is simply trying something new. An experiment to see if it sticks and aligns with the feeling you want from those three “goals.”

Maybe what I’ve convinced myself is “not wanting to waste my energy on something that isn’t a full body yes” is just a mask for fear. Maybe I can be more open to trying ideas of what could align with what I truly want. 

On the other hand, if I’m going to push myself toward something, I should feel a deep pull towards it as well. It likely isn’t going to be a matter of waiting for something to show up directly in front of me screaming at me to take action. But I think a balance of not wasting energy is exploring and learning and following the intuitive whispers and nudges. I think those are the keys to the path of my life. I think the actions that are forced because of feelings of pressure, desperation and anxiety delay and distract from the true path forward. They become louder than the whispers and the nudges and then those whispers and nudges get missed. Other lessons are learned and I don’t believe fate makes mistakes but I’m tired of delays. And I think that’s where I am now. I’m feeling that pressure, that desperation, that anxiety and it makes me want to take action that is more forced than pulled. It feels like a rebellion. Like I’m frustrated with fate and impatient so I act in an attempt to move things along faster. I get angry with God and I try to take matters into my own hands. And because I do that, I say no to all the whispers and nudges that are truly meant to guide me in the right direction. And counterintuitively, by trying to speed things up, I slow them down even more. But how do I know that’s not a false belief? How do I know that’s not just some excuse not to take action and put myself out into the world? Intuition, I suppose. Trust. Faith. My intuition says that it’s truth and not fear. It says that fear is actually the forced action. The desperate action. The truth, the hard thing, is to surrender and be patient. And that means admitting to the fact that nothing is in my control. It should be freeing and yet it feels defeating. I guess my fear response is to take control, do it all myself because that’s what has worked for me when it comes to school and work, and really everything I’ve ever tried to achieve. But those things I’ve tried to achieve haven’t been the things I’ve desired with my full heart and they haven’t required deep, meaningful connection with other people. So it seems the answer is surrendering, being patient and consciously listening to the whispers and nudges from God.