If you'd rather listen to an audio version, here's 5:28 minutes of me trying not to screw up my own words:
I am deep in the mud of realignment right now. Most days it feels like pure torture compared to living a life that I already figured out, but I'm so familiar with this part of the change process because of all the other big life challenges that I've gone through already, that I know I just have to live it, feel it, breathe it, and keep walking through it. This is my own version of the Winter Olympics, full of icy unknowns and potential falls. Even physical body aches and pains tend to come with realignment, and I just have to keep remembering to put one foot in front of the other no matter what.
At an energetic level, everything inside of me feels torn between two realities. The old one is the one that I am so familiar with, and it has given me so much comfort, joy, safety, and security. It's the safe one because I've walked those roads before. It's easy because I've already overcome the challenges. Yet, there was a time when that path was once scary too, and I have to keep reminding myself of that. The new path is only scary because I haven't walked it before.
Then there's my own damn inner critic. That critic has built a lot of nasty brick walls in my brain around what I can or can't do and what people will or won't value enough to support the work I need to do. It's frustrating, it's maddening, and I know it's all just part of the process of sorting out my own inner blocks. The inner critic is the voice of everyone who has never dared to try, or who gave up instead of getting back up, before they actually succeeded.
The worst days are when I look at what other people are doing and go down their rabbit holes of success, trying to reverse engineer what might work for me. Those are the worst because I'm not focusing on what I want to offer and I'm not doing the work of creating what is unique to me and my experience. I'm getting shiny-object syndrome and following the glittery path of unicorn poop other people have left behind rather than picking my head up, looking in the mirror, and digging into my experience for what I can uniquely offer from what I've learned and personally overcome.
The best days are when I just dig in and just start creating stuff. When I put my thoughts and words into writing, into images, into workshops, into pages, into actions- that's where the flow is. That's where my experience pours freely and fully into something that can be molded into more- into something that can actually help other people have an easier road than I did. That's when I feel like I'm doing what I need to be doing, rather than getting distracted by what anyone else is doing or how they're doing it. I have to keep reminding myself to stay in my lane and to stop looking at what other people are doing.
Just today, I caught myself going off on a tangent of trying to determine what should and shouldn't be part of a brand as it starts to take shape. I know the dangers of getting wrapped up in the psychological mind game of branding, trying to figure out the big picture first, rather than just creating the work that needs to be delivered. I was falling into the trap I have warned other people not to fall into. I know the more aligned process is to just take action and create the content part first and then figure out packaging or branding after you can take a look at what you've actually created. I know this, and I still fell into the trap. I am human and sometimes my mind forgets what it already knows.
I'm sharing this part of the journey because it's the part no one talks about. It's messy. It's uncomfortable. It's like being an awkward pre-teen who has outgrown clothes that used to fit but isn't quite fully developed enough to hang with the older cooler teenagers. All those same insecurities about identity. The familiar discomfort of not knowing who to stand next to in the room. On the dance floor, swaying a little awkwardly, but not yet fully getting into the music.
Growth beyond anything we've known before, even when it comes late in life, is a little bit like those pre-teen years of just trying to figure ourselves out... and here I am... finding that alignment into the next thing, once again. I know I'll get there eventually and find my stride. I just need to spend more days creating what's next in actions and remember not to get too distracted by the glittery unicorn poop everyone else has left in my view.
I'm grateful that at least my life experience has made me very well-versed in the process of change and pushing through discomfort. I know that on the other side of every challenge is something even better and more aligned than what I've created before. If you're in the mud of change and finding your alignment, put on your waders and let's keep on walking.
