Many of us come from an ancestry of hard-workers. People who would wake up at the crack of dawn to prepare meals for their family, tend to the land, or head off to work, only to return when the sun sets. Then they would go to bed and do the same thing all over again the next day. For many, this routine wasn’t founded out of enjoyment for their tasks, but out of necessity. Our ancestors lived their lives working to provide. That was the only way they knew.
This is not to say that many of us now cannot be hard-working or experience moments where we, too, are working to provide. However, there is an energetic shift that has been simmering over the years and now I see it emerging more and more. Many of us now don’t want to have to do the hard work. Traditionalists would say this mindset is a bad one and ask, “What will happen to society?” but I think this speaks to the deeper calling within us that has longed to be heard.
Humans want to do something meaningful. For our ancestors, that involved contributing to their lineage. Working not for themselves but for the grandchildren yet to come. Building wealth and doing what needed to be done to secure the family’s legacy.
Now, we crave doing work that is meaningful and, given the foundation our ancestors built—within our family structures but also within society as a whole—we feel more adept to pursue our passions. Again, traditionalists may call these new-age-thinkers selfish, but this generation emerging is the tail end of those willing to live an unimpassioned life.
We seek joy.
Before, there was so much in society’s infrastructure building upon our needs for survival. Even into the 19th and 20th century, much of what was built came from necessity, not necessarily joy.
What the traditionalists do not see, and what society has yet to experience, is that when people are able to pursue livelihoods chosen out of what brings them joy, that benefits everyone.
Happier people create a happier society. Happier people have much to give because they have filled their cup first. Happier people are secure in their own joy and, so, they can help others advance.
Everything builds upon each other. It might seem radical and it might seem disastrous to let the “individualists” run the show, but they have not ever been chasing a life of self-absorption, they have been chasing a life of fulfillment. The plague of insults the Millennials, and some of the Gen X group, have received paint them as shallow and superficial in their desires—claiming that they do not want to work.
Quite the contrary: no one before them has shown what it is like to work in something they love. What they aspire for has not been done before.
Their parents and their grandparents hated their jobs or broke their backs doing arduous labor. They witnessed this of their ancestors and found no joy in such a life of depletion. This is the generation that sees work as something that should add to their lives. So they had to learn how they can work AND do something that they are passionate about. Joy is non-negotiable.
I’d even go so far as to say it would be a dishonor to the ancestors who came before us to not pursue joy. They paved the way so we wouldn’t have to break our backs, like they did. They carved out a society that supports free enterprise. They helped create opportunities for those that came after them.
Societally, this is where things are going. More and more people are waking up to the reality that they can work WHILE experiencing joy, it doesn’t need to be one or the other.
This paradigm shift towards living for joy impacts everyone, including you. Thus, I’d invite you to notice what brings you joy. How can you allow that joy to take up a greater part of your life and lead you forward?
I tend to go really hard on things. I don’t know if this is a ME thing, a being-in-your-20s thing, a Manifesting Generator (#humandesign) thing, or maybe it’s just a human thing.
If I’m interested in something, there’s no easing in and I just want to dedicate ALL of my energy to this thing. I’m not sure if I’m interested just for the moment, perhaps because there’s something I’m meant to learn or explore, or if this will become a long-term investment for me.
Setting aside the bogus rules, naysayers, and societally-imposed stigmas about jumping around in interests, there really is no problem with being this way.
I often say something is only a problem when you think it is.
That in and of itself takes a lot of figuring out (which is a conversation for a whole ‘nother day) but to put it simply: we have full autonomy.
Someone else can attempt to force their beliefs on you, but only you can internalize them. Others can live their life a certain way, but you don’t have to follow along. Just because you haven’t seen what you imagine in existence, or having been done before, that doesn’t make it impossible.
So, it’s taken me years of bashing myself for not being able to stick with one thing and coming to a place of acceptance with my wide array of interests, and then floundering again. Yet, I feel more solid now after having gone through enough experiences with myself where I’ve seen how I am and I began to understand my patterns.
I have waves of energy that encourage me to learn, build, meditate, take action, and so much more. I’m not meant to stay in one stage processing information or only doing. Just like the cycles of nature, remaining in one stage is simply not sustainable.
It feels sort of like that for my interests. Sometimes I want to revisit one and other times I want to move on to something new.
There are some interests I pursue personally and spend a lot of time with only to one day feel like I’ve had enough. When I say I tend to go hard with something that means, I pick up a book today on crystals and suddenly I’ll get the itch to learn more and tomorrow think about becoming a crystal healer, or something like that. This is the way my brain works.
And you might be thinking: well, it’s not a bad thing to get excited about something! We all get these little phases of being interested in things. This is true.
What I’ve learned to be careful with is not trying to turn my interest into a career.
As in: enjoy the stage of being interested in something and not jump ahead by trying to monetize it or make it MY THING before I understand how invested I am in my current interest.
Let me describe this in another way.
I low-key have thought about becoming a registered dietitian, opening a jewelry business, studying reiki, teaching meditation, becoming a monk, getting vocal lessons to become a singer, going into modeling, and so much more! These are all things you probably had no idea about because they never made it to the surface. If I had been interested in making necklaces or whatever just a little bit longer, I probably would’ve talked about it.
This isn’t to say you can’t turn an interest into a career because you certainly can! You can do whatever you want. I kind of like to let things brew underneath the surface for a while to make sure that I’m really into something before making declarations to the world, but that’s just me. At the same time, I’ve made the big declarations after much contemplation before and that didn’t keep me from changing my path.
All of this to say, maybe this is the way it is.
Ooh, so wise, right?
This is the way it is meaning… I am full of passion and a growing list of interests and I get something out of everything that I pursue. I feel that the excitement I have over these different pursuits generates this super glowing energy in me that makes others feel excited, too.
Now, I can’t control what others think or do but I’ve been told by others that they felt more confident to share something they’re into after seeing me do that (whoa!!!). This isn’t so much of a reason as for why I behave the way I do so much as it is just a possible consequence of me being myself.
I believe that when we are being ourselves, as wild, cooky, nonsensical, or ridiculous as we may feel, it encourages others to be themselves, too.
So, there isn’t any ONE PATH for me (as I’ve repeated to myself over and over again) but I feel excited each time I come home to this feeling I have right now as I write this.
It’s a feeling of being everything.
Of knowing:
I am everything.
We are everything.
There is no limit.
No limit to our power.
No limit to our voice.
No limit to our spirit.
I’ve been peacefully disconnecting with things that I’ve held tightly for so long and it’s made room for me to find that new, NEW.
This is a really miraculous and slightly cliff-hangery type of moment because I’m figuring stuff out. At the same time, I’m not asking myself: what am I going to do next? because I’ve been here before.
I’ve been in this place, and I trust that exploring what feels true to my heart will bring me everything I’ve dreamed of and even more that I never knew I wanted.
I hope this summer has found you well. I hope you have opened up to discovering the possibilities present. I hope you’ve opened up to ways that you can be a creator of whatever it is you want. If none of that resonates, I simply hope you have been happy.
That’s what I’ve been trying to find, trying to be.
I’ve never been the kind of person who uses the word happy as a state-of-being. Partially because I’m naturally a little manic and fluctuate between feeling over the moon excited, pit of despair depressed, and the most common feeling: nothing. There’s a lot of nothing, dull, boring types of moments in my life. Happy seems elevated beyond ordinary in a way I’ve never felt I could meet.
You know those scales with smiley faces at the hospital that say “rate your pain”? There are usually 10 levels, with 1 being the least and 10 being the worst pain. Somehow, I invented my own scale for my state-of-being with 10 being happy. So if 10 is the best, can you really feel like a 10 all the time? No. Or, at least I don’t think so.
Basically I’ve withheld my feelings of being a 10 and being happy for a while.
You might be thinking: why would you do such a thing? It sounds like you’re making life harder on yourself.
Damn right, I am. Primarily, this is because being a ball of stress and anxiety has been my resting state. That is the way I’ve felt for months and that comes from me forcing myself to do a lot of activities and be in situations that I were just not working for me. I was working in a job I hated, which younger me promised this would never happen again, but here I was. Then, even the enjoyable things I did in addition were filled with a rushed and strained energy. Having majority of my days spent on things I hated made me put a lot of pressure on the things I liked to fulfill my every need. Everything was out of balance.
Another factor to not feeling like a 10 has more to do with long-term planning. I might feel good one day but what if I happen to feel even better on a future day? Saving my 10s, essentially. If I rate my happiness today as a 10 then can that future happiness be a 10? As a human being, or maybe simply as me, novelty of experiences impacts the way I feel. I have largely formulated ratings for how I feel based on the experiences I’m having. If novel experiences are rarely repeatable then perhaps my happiness cannot be either. It’s worth noting that I’m not purposefully doing any of this.
Through lots of self-reflection, I’ve realized I have been withholding feeling happy because it’s something I can control.
Just to unpack this a little more, it’s not a bad thing to be influenced by experiences as a marker for how you feel. Things like: taking a trip, meeting up for lunch at a new restaurant, talking to a friend you haven’t spoken to in years, trying a new activity are just a few examples of first-time or special events that can really make you feel a little something extra on that day. I can even ride the high for a couple of days!
What happens when novel experiences cannot happen, though? During the coronavirus pandemic, my novel experiences have diminished significantly. There are only so many different teas to make and Netflix specials I can sit through before it all starts to feel the same. Life was feeling comparatively worse than when I was more socially active and got to meet face-to-face with people other than my immediate family on a regular basis. I know I’m not the only one going through this but that thought did not bring me much comfort.
Well, surely, if I was to hear everyone is cured and the world is “back to normal” tomorrow that would make me feel better, right??
For a while I thought so…but there’s no amount of time that the pandemic will last that can make me better. That brings me back to my point about placing my happiness in things happening outside of me.
In days of isolation and monotony, I’ve had to not only create moments of happiness but redefine the purpose of my existence. I say this not to be dramatic (I mean, it kind of is!) but because one cannot happen without the other. Naturally, if I seek to allow myself to say I am happy just because, then I am in control of my sense of happiness.
I am happy to be alive today. I am happy to be able to breathe. I am happy to open my eyes in the morning and begin another day.
A year ago, these words would have sounded so meaningless to me. In a materialistic society, like the one I live in, getting things (whether tangible or intangible) is happiness and success. That’s why I’ve had to take a step back and think of how I could make my happiness less dependent on circumstances or the ebbs and flows of life.
As I shed the work and projects that I was doing before that caused me stress, I feel more whole. It’s easier to find balance because I can spend my days the way I want. Of course, still within financial and circumstantial means but it has given me an appreciation for the simple things and a change in perspective that I was very much in need of.
There’s a book I once read for a college English class called Man’s Search for Meaning. Putting aside the sex segregated title, it is a magnificent book written by Viktor E. Frankl about his time at Nazi concentration camps. Frankl was a Jew, a psychotherapist, a father, and somewhat of an important person in his community. As he chronicles the experiences he has in the concentration camps, his pride, his family, his clothing, and everything that he ever thought that defined him were taken away. Basically, he was forced to redefine his meaning of life.
I am, of course, in much more privileged circumstances at the moment than Frankl was in the Nazi concentration camps, but that is why the book still holds lessons of value. It shows how, in the most dire of circumstances, we all have the choice of how we want to define ourselves, what we believe our purpose is, and what determines our happiness.
All this to say, I now see happiness as something I can allow myself.
I’ve been pushing aside feeling good for a while but each day is a gift. It’s a humbling thing to recognize how magical it is to simply exist right now on Earth. So anything else that happens is just extra stuff outside of me but it is not me. This may sound super hippie-dippie but it just feels true to me. If I had everything taken away from me like Viktor E. Frankl, which hopefully it doesn’t have to come to that but, you know, I would like to be able to remember who I am. Instead of being a girl with many selves and different versions of herself navigating the world, I’d like to be a soul that is whole and one with myself.
While I have a conscious understanding of the mindset shift I’m making for myself, that’s not to say it is easy or that I’m now in some blissed out state! I do believe life should have more ease (this is actually a value of mine) so when things feel forced, I know I am not in balance. At this point I’m not above getting upset about things that are outside of my control and I am sensitive to the way others act toward me or each other. So, it’s a practice to find ease. It’s a practice to not make these outside-of-myself-things mine and not internalizing beliefs of others. For my own sanity and happiness.
There are certainly other layers to this but those will have to wait until another day. I’ve just described one aspect in the giant puzzle of understanding myself and my own humanity. I’ve talked about my experience with people-pleasing and removing all of these things outside of myself to help me get closer to my core. I can’t say that the way I view happiness, or purpose, is for certain but I do know I feel more and more authentic to myself as the days go on.
If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear how you create happiness and what your definition of that is. Thank you for reading. Consider sharing this on social media, if you like it.
Sometimes I don’t have words to express how I feel about my existence. I feel like I’ve grown so much in my spirituality in the past two to three years but only now have I begun to dive into the way spirituality impacts me as a soul.
I know spirituality is non-denominational and it is such a general term that there really aren’t rules around what it’s supposed to look like. Of course, leave it to me to always create these ideas in my head about the way things should be.
I’ve shed my ties to material or people outside of myself as being my anchor to my spirituality. I still like my crystals and the new age podcasts that I listen to but I don’t look toward things outside of myself to solve my problems. In doing that, I’ve been able to unwrap what existence really means for me–what would be the most satisfying experience I could have as a human.
We are often told growing up that we need to find our purpose. Therefore, I thought it would be great to share how I’ve changed my views on purpose through the lens of my spirituality. You can check out the video here:
Okay, this isn’t the newest of news but I’ve recently been posting more videos on my YouTube channel. The episodes of the Make It Happen Podcast have always been there to listen to but now we’ll start having more exclusive video content on the channel, as well.
At the moment, there are some videos previously released on IGTV. Personally, I like watching videos on my computer using YouTube more than through Instagram on my phone. I’m all about options and that’s why I also upload any IGTV videos I post over on YouTube!
I’ve already got some longer form video ideas in mind and I would love to explore video editing so go ahead and subscribe so you can keep in the loop about any new videos!
For starters, check out this video on Why The Change You Want Isn’t Happening. I share two common scenarios I often see for why change isn’t sticking.
Personally, I’ve been more of a controlling person in much of my life so the points mentioned in this video are for me as much as for you. Forever on the journey of learning and self-improving!
What has been on your mind lately? Do you feel preoccupied with feelings that you can’t put your finger on? We are in the midst of Cancer season, according to Western Astrology. A time for relishing in the comfort of our homes and in our hearts.
If you take note of the changes from one month to the next (every 30 or so days, we are in a new astrology season) you may notice how different themes present themselves in your day to day life. This is not a coincidence. There are natural forces shifting among us in the skies and on Earth. We are only a small speck of matter—mostly water, in fact—so it is no wonder we can feel the nuances of the outside world within us.
Characteristics of Cancer Season
At this time, the sign of Cancer affects us all, regardless of what your zodiac sign is. Cancer is the cardinal sign of the water elements (the other two being Scorpio and Pisces). It is an extremely sensitive sign, often more attuned to the happenings in the home and to the emotional nature of the world at large than most people. Their deep compassion for all living things and natural intuitive tendencies make them known as the “mother” of the zodiac.
Thus, it is a brilliant time to tend to the areas in your life that need some nurturing. That could mean your social life by reconnecting with close friends in a cozy setting or revisiting old hobbies. Your professional and personal lives can also benefit from Cancer energy by taking the time to carefully go through the steps for what you’d like to accomplish. Not just running into a new project or taking on a large load all of a sudden, but integrating small pieces so that you can do this thing well and in a sustainable way.
In addition, Cancer provides a wonderful energy for encouraging inner child work and emotional clearing. If this is new terminology to you then just know that connecting to the child within you will help solidify your sense of self. Think back on what life was like when you were a child, what your motivations were, and where that persists (or no longer is present) in your life today.
Ideas for connecting you your inner child:
Go through a photo album or scrapbook from childhood
These provide a visual for memories you may have forgotten about
Spend time in nature
A walk outside or, if possible, a swim in a pool, lake, or ocean will help kindle clarity on emotions.
Meditate on an event from childhood
Imagine the situation playing out in a way where you get exactly what you needed
Write a letter to your childhood self
Pick a specific age or time in your life for the most effectiveness
Read a book from childhood
A short story, novel, or any book you loved as a child will look so different now
Watch a movie from childhood
Again, your adult eyes will see it so differently. Ideally choose a movie you haven’t seen since childhood
Listen to music from childhood
Dust off some records or CDS (or just YouTube music) and sing along! Disney classics anyone?
Play with pets
Animals directly speak to the child within us. Petting your house pets, riding a horse, or a game of fetch with your dog, to name a few ideas.
These are strange times in the world but don’t let that stop you from taking care of yourself. This Cancer season is here to remind us to look within to inspire happiness in the present. To Tap into our emotions so that we may heal any wounds and make peace with them. Try setting aside 30 minutes in the morning or winding down your day with some of the above activities.
Feel what’s coming up and trust it.
As a disclaimer, I am not a professional astrologer or horoscope writer. The information outlined here comes from an intuitive place and is meant to be used in combination with your own sense of intuition and lifestyle.
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