As children, we grow up always thinking of the future…what will happen later in the day, when is our next play-date, when are we going to crawl, to walk, to run? When will we drive and what will that feel like? When will we go to 5th grade, middle school, our first kiss, or high school, graduate, and on and on. We’re always thinking forward about the hopeful future.
And then when we get to be about age 25, our brains are fully developed, and we begin to think about the past. We also begin to create a cycle in our lives relating to the past. We look for what we can and cannot do based on what we have already done. We approach life, get married, start having children, get a job we want or choose the job of being a stay-at-home parent, and we’re constantly looking from our past to determine what we can and cannot do.
Often, we keep going through the same thought loops, the same cycles over and over again. We choose things that are our comfortable favorites…favorite shampoo, same daily routine, same rotation of meals, favorite restaurants. We recycle the same things continually. We find comfort in things rather than ourselves. We learn to fear our feelings, and resist them, rather than allow them.
This rote life can cause us to ask: “Who am I? What do I actually like? Is this my best life? Is this the life I was meant to live? Is this all there is for me? These types of questions can lead us to wanting more from our lives, and a bereft feeling that there is something inside of us we want to let out. Perhaps there’s the seed of a business idea, or an untouched dream, but our brain only offers up the same familiar cycles, or instead, thoughts to deter us from going after the unknown.
I have met many who have had passions or interests they want to pursue and yet, they have a complete explanation of why they can’t do that thing, or why they shouldn’t do that thing. They shouldn’t start that business; they don’t know how…that is the biggest one. “I just don’t know how I’ll do that,” or, “I don’t know if I want to go out of my comfort zone,” or, “I’m afraid to do that, it’s too much work.”
This happens so often as we grow into adulthood and age, looking from our past to tell us what we can and cannot do. Instead, we must learn to create in our future, lean into the person that we want to be, and as we create what we want with our intentional life, we find greater love and trust for ourselves and more grace for others! It opens our minds and hearts for a deep love and connection.
My goal is to help others to navigate to the other side of these windmills in our minds, to find that grace and ennobling self-love.