Day 204: When Your Soul Won’t Get Back in Line
Trusting your inner guidance when the world is telling you to get back in line can be difficult.
Your soul can be screaming for what it knows is your next best step. Your heart can be in agreement.
And yet logic, and the court of public opinion, meaning what the people in your life will say, can be telling you to stay put.
Your ego mind, which is always trying to protect you and keep you safe, chimes in, "You've got a good thing going. Why throw all that away? This isn't the time to make a shift. Just wait until…"
It's so much easier to stay where you are. It's known, it's comfortable, and it's safe.
It doesn't matter if it's the relationship you're in, the work you do, the place you live, the friend group you have, your level of health.
Those are all major parts of your life and looking at disrupting one of them can be really scary.
Disrupting more than one would be considered a little crazy by most observers.
But what do you do when your heart and your soul are begging you to do it, not because you have to, but because it's what you really want. Even if it might make things more difficult at first.
How will you explain this choice that seems to come out of nowhere?
What is the story you will craft to explain yourself?
Wait, what happened to not needing to explain or defend?
But people will ask and some will need to be told some kind of decision making process that went into this big change, right?
These are all questions that are going through my head as the timer is counting down on a major shift in my life.
My private life has always been private. I'm uncomfortable with oversharing.
None of my social media is focused on me. It's all about what I do.
I'm kind of a hermit, and I like it that way.
So these questions are running around in my head.
And yet, daily life doesn't stop.
And then last night I see a prompt from someone I subscribe to on Substack.
Subscribing surprised me, because initially it didn't seem like something I would gravitate to. Pink and girlie and whimsical with flamingos, but it drew me in. And so did her AI prompts.
Anyway, this prompt was about being at a summer festival and where would I put myself. It could be main stage, or a list of several other locations.
Having just told you my preference is being alone, I wouldn't be going to this festival.
So I flipped the prompt and put it behind me while I sat on the beach at sunset in a Tommy Bahama beach chair (required for living in Cabo) with a glass of wine, watching the dolphins play.
I realized something when I looked at the image ChatGPT created. I didn't spend a second trying to decide which of the locations offered was where I would put myself. I knew I wouldn't be there at all. I would be doing my own thing without any FOMO.
That kind of knowing can be easy to miss because it doesn't always arrive as a dramatic revelation.
It either arrives as a simple, immediate no, or a simple, immediate yes.
When I saw it, it felt like it was taking me home, taking me back to the 90's when I lived on a private beach and every month my husband and I would have a caterer come and do a private anniversary dinner for us. Whales and dolphins frequently provided entertainment.
That was my soul speaking to me through that image.
It was saying, "See, this is the real you. You recognize yourself here. You went on a long journey and had a great ride, and now it's time to continue from a more authentic, open, and peaceful space."
No matter what the world says, your heart wants what it wants.
Sometimes the most self-led thing we can do is stop asking whether our knowing makes sense to everyone else.
It only has to be true.
My hope is that more of us listen when life shows us where we recognize ourselves, and that we have the courage to follow that knowing home.
Today's Gentle Practice
Think about one choice you keep trying to make logical for other people.
Ask yourself:
Where do I recognize myself most clearly?
Not where it makes the most sense.
Not where other people would approve.
Just where something in you softens and says, "There I am."
Let that be enough information for today.
With you,
Lynn
P.S. You can see the image I created here.
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