Okay so I’m pretty fired up today. There have been several themes throughout all of my client sessions this week, and a big one that I keep hearing is, “I’m really good at researching and gathering information and learning new techniques- I could do that all day.”
And when I ask how much of that information is being implemented and integrated, I’m usually met with silence, a nervous giggle, or a “Yeah…I know.”
Anybody else?
Have you ever picked up another self-help book or read another nutrition article or downloaded another self-love manifesto and, while perusing it, thought to yourself, “Oh yeah I already know this!”
And for a minute, you feel good like, oh yeah, I got this, I know this.
But have you ever had that voice sneak up on you after that? That voice that says, “So why aren’t you doing it? Why haven’t you applied that yet? Hello you already know this, what’s wrong with you that you can’t figure it out or implement it?”
Well, here’s the thing. We live in this magical time where more information than ever is available with a few strokes of our fingertips on a keyboard and a few clicks on a trackpad. It’s amazing how much is available to us anywhere we are in the world, and I am super grateful to the internet for these possibilities.
And at the same time, it can create a huge problem- especially for brilliant, intellectual, fast-thinking women who are excellent at gathering, assimilating, and organizing information. I’m looking at you book nerds, research paper writers, A students, perfectionists- you know who you are.
Gathering information is the safe zone. It’s what we were rewarded for growing up and in school. Do your research, construct it into a well thought out argument, get an A on the paper, be well informed and awesome. Right?
And with billions and billions of articles and ebooks and published research out there, you could literally spend the rest of your life gathering information while actually changing nothing about your life.
Hard truth? Knowing about something and being able to talk about it isn’t the same as actually living it, embodying it, and implementing it as a tool to help you feel more alive.
Only actions and practice can do that.
But what happens when we decide it’s time to start acting? To leave the research zone and step into the integration zone?
That’s when all our friends show up. You know those friends- fear, worry, self-doubt, anxiety, overwhelm, alluring safety and security, comfort- the friends that only show up when you’re about to make a decision for the better.
These are the feelings that you wish would just go away for good but are pesky and persistent and unfortunately super reliable. More reliable sometimes than things like confidence and trust and peace.
And as hard as you try to make them go away, they aren’t going to go away until you face them.
Life isn’t going to shift or change or improve until you actually start living.
And guess what?
Living isn’t neat and tidy and something we can intellectualize into a checklist or numbered list.
Living is big and messy and chaotic and always shifting and changing, and really can’t be experienced through logic and reason and knowledge alone.
To LIVE, to feel ALIVE and ON FIRE and INSPIRED and CREATIVE, you have to experience your feelings.
You have to connect to your body and your heart- to deepen into your feelings (the whole spectrum of them).
You have to clear away the years of programming and separating your mind and body.
You have to CHOOSE to be awake every single day- even if it would feel more comfortable to go back to the safe zone of information gathering and the sidelines.
EPIC ADVENTURES, CREATIVE PURSUITS AND QUESTS, INSPIRED LIVING AND JOYFUL MOVEMENT DON’T HAPPEN ON THE SIDELINES. THEY HAPPEN WHEN YOU STEP INTO THE SPOTLIGHT OF YOUR LIFE. WHEN YOU CHOOSE TO LIVE EMBODIED- FULLY HERE AND PRESENT IN YOUR EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE.
And? It’s a practice.
It’s a practice to show up every single day to that spotlight.
To CHOOSE to be embodied.
To feel your feelings, to continually develop a relationship with your body, to act and create and serve- not from a place of proving your worth or trying to be enough- but from a place of truth, of joy, of deep knowing of who you are and what you’re about.
This is so key. Please please please don’t just gather information and think and dream about what you would like to experience and how you would like to live your life.
Actually, do what you will. Who am I to tell you how to live? We are the only ones who can decide and know that for ourselves.
And, if you’re ready to act, ready to wake up and integrate all of you- mind, body, and spirit-, and you are ready to step into that spotlight simply for you- my dear I am RIGHT here with you, supporting you and cheering you on.
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