It feels easy to do the right thing when you’re in alignment.
notice when the effort feels easy
One of the most pleasant and surprising elements about pivoting my entire life to be a reflection of what it is that I actually want to do is how easy things are now that used to look like work. When I was still in a place that I didn’t want to be, my body/mind/spirit writhing against the cage I was trying to shove myself into and lock the door on, even the smallest, ‘easiest’ tasks ended up feeling super frictional and laborious. Things that should have taken no effort at all felt so hard that they would sometimes make me feel physically sick to do.
I have many thoughts about the state of modern well-being (or lack thereof) and the conditions that drive people to seek help, support, and sometimes even numbing agents to be able to become more tolerant of their internal state. And while these tools may sometimes be the correct things to reach for, I think that there are some much easier, more low-hanging-fruit ways to treat ourselves when we do not feel Good. I think our lives get dark and our bodies start to shut down when we put ourselves in situations we don’t want to be in, repeatedly.
For me, towards the end of working the job I was working before leaning completely into writing, self-trust and crafting my own path from scratch, I remember feeling so nauseous and drained I could barely focus at the office. And I was barely even doing anything! It was not like I was over-working myself or burning myself out in any kind of obvious/visceral sense; it was simply that I no longer wanted to be doing what I was doing. I felt called to something else, and my body was sending me increasingly loud signals that this was the case. It was asking: will you listen? Will you change where you are?
As soon as I listened to these signals (which did take a while!) all of these symptoms went away, and I started feeling more alive again. I literally started feeling more sentient. Colours looked brighter. Life got more vivid. I became more sensitive. That one is big, actually. Sensitivity. As soon as the full breadth of my sensitivity came back online, it was obvious why I was not feeling it before: of course, I would eventually numb myself out if what I was experiencing was so misaligned that I could barely sit through a day of my life. Imagine doing that for years! Decades! Herein, you have much of the standard experience of modern life.
Note: I want to once again emphasize that there was nothing aesthetically ‘wrong’ with my life. In fact, I was practically living the ‘dream’. A great job, good work-life balance, prestige/status/desirable life path, solid trajectory to financial security, etc. But it did not feel right to me. And as much as I wanted it to (because it would have been so easy and simple if it did!) I could not convince myself out of the somatic reality that it was just not. right. for. me.
It does not need to be this way, though. There is a way to actually notice when something feels wrong and listen to it, instead of blunting it with whatever powerful, emotionally overwhelming stimulus is most convenient and easy to access. Of course you would not want to live in a reality every day that your whole body and being is resisting. Of course the natural thing would be to do whatever you can to not feel it. Of course that would result in poor well-being because when you numb out the bad you can no longer experience the good!!!
denying your intuition = living in a lie
I’ve written about how the only shortcuts to life that I am genuinely concerned with are trusting yourself before it ‘makes sense’, and telling the truth. Staying in a life where you need to performatively participate snd appear happy and engaged when ultimately you are neither, is a way of lying. To yourself and to the world. Daily.
If you want a radically alive and abundant life, the only real way to get that is to stop lying to yourself, and begin acting on what feels most intuitively aligned… You don’t know the life you are meant to have until you are willing to disappoint others, break whatever mold has been imposed on you, and become who you genuinely are. Without effort, force, or conditioning.
There is something inside of you that is fighting to get out; everyone has it. The inner voice that is nudging them towards what is genuinely true to them. So many of us have gotten so good at muting it, at beating it out of ourselves and telling it to sssshhhhh that we do not even recognize it anymore.
But there are ways to return home to yourself, to develop a practice of listening, to do what you want even when others expect you to do something else. There is a way to attune yourself again to your inner voice. Even if it has been a very long time since you were fused with it.
But it requires a willingness to feel all of the things you numbed out along the way. Which can be painful! But worth it, because in feeling them, you will become unburdened by them, free to be present, free to listen to yourself.
I feel so strongly about liberating people to be on their path. On the path their intuition is nudging them towards, on the path that would maximally harness exactly who they are and actualize what their gifts are trying to take them towards. I do feel we all have a path, an organic one, an effortless one, that is trying to rise up and push itself out of us and into the world, naturally, playfully, effortlessly. A path where the hard stuff feels easy, what looks ‘impressive’ to others feels like a privilege to do yourself, and where there is no need at all to cultivate any numbness inside of you. A path where you are willing to feel all the things, because they are mostly positive! And when they aren’t, you have a supportive, aligned structure in your life to catch you and hold you through what is hard. We all have access to that life, that path, that unfolding, if we wish to reach out and grab it. Or more accurately: allow it to happen by simply tuning in, and listening to our intuition whispering to us.
I’m currently taking on 1-2 clients to work with 1:1. My coaching methodology helps you do exactly what I describe in this essay: tune out the noise of your conditioning, environment, and any false narratives you are still attached to, and listen to yourself confidently and freely. Ideally, you are reaching out to me if you have a fairly high degree of agency/autonomy in your life or are trending towards it. You either own/operate your own business, are working towards that, or are fairly advanced in your career in a way that allows a strong degree of freedom to be exercised in your life. You feel like you’ve done ‘everything right’ and should be satisfied, but feel called to something more. You want to know what a fully aligned, free and effortless life could feel and look like for you. Together, we will extract and enact the signals you are getting from yourself and begin shaping your life in the image of your intuition in a way that feels safe, steady, abundant, and generative. Send me a DM with a sentence on how you’d like to feel after working together if this resonates with you.
If you prefer X or email, reach out there.
related essays you may enjoy: a return to soul, on self-trust, on slowness, taste and living well, shrinking hurts, unblock your mind
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If you live in SF: I am hosting a live meet-up on Saturday November 22nd. Fill out this form to get details. I am also speaking at the Love Symposium about love and status games tomorrow (11/16) at 5:30pm at the Commons.
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