Knowing

As you hang just a little bit too long onto what feels like the biggest decision of your life, just take a moment to sit back and let all of the thoughts leave your mind. It sounds counterproductive, right? But look, it’s taken you this long and you still haven’t grown the balls to call your shot so what is a thoughtless moment really going to hurt? Just do it. Close your eyes and just breathe.

It’s always in retrospect that I realize that I can actually trust myself. As cheesy as it sounds, sometimes the only thing standing between me and that knowing is a pause and a deep breath. Deep breaths could have saved me a lot of anxiety had I realized their power earlier in life. When my son is upset I ask him to breathe with me, which only gets an initial response of anger if I don’t push the issue until he gives in. It makes me wonder if somewhere along the way someone did tell me to stop and breathe and I was just too stubborn to listen so they didn’t push the issue.

That’s a thread that has been very intricately woven through every aspect of my life – my stubbornness. During job interviews, I like to call it persistence. When it comes to relationships, I insist that it’s simply knowing what I want. When it comes to my resistance to rules, I say we should never be blindly following when we can be wide eyed and discovering. I will call my stubbornness whatever I need to in order to get it in the door because I believe there is a place for it in every situation whether someone sees it or not.

Now look, I know I’m way over here on the other side of the screen but I can feel that cringe from here. Reel it back in a moment and let me explain. Being a stubborn person doesn’t mean I’m not open minded, nor that I’m always unwavering or insisting that I’m right. The truth is, I’m an incredibly impressionable person. I will pick up and try on just about anything someone throws at me if it seems like it will lead to a fun time, to learning. I’m not stubborn in the way that I won’t adapt, only in the way that I will take it off and throw it to the ground, declaring it not for me just as quickly as I picked it up.

Sometimes, you just know. It happens in different ways, occasionally a slow crawl that creeps up on you but leaves you squirming, desperate to get away. Other times it hits like a truck, the kind that sometimes is just too heavy to rely on its breaks and is the very reason they put runaway ramps on the side of highways. Whichever way it hits, the solution is the same. You let go of what isn’t serving you anymore and you make room for what does.

I think I’ve probably stayed just about everywhere just a little too long. I’d hang onto relationships as if I could reason away the incompatibility to spare hurt feelings. In some twisted way, I had myself feeling guilt anytime it came time to leave a job. Racking up college debt because I thought being a mom at 18 was enough of a disappointment, the least I could do was show my parents I could make it through college. School, afterall, seemed like the only thing I was good at. All of them though, I inevitably had to give up on.

You can’t force what’s not right. If you pay enough attention, have enough awareness of yourself, you’ll see that the longer you withstand situations that don’t fit the stronger the physical bodily reactions these situations will pull from you. So again, pause, take a deep breath and tune into yourself. You don’t have to explain how you know what’s best for you as long as you can trust that you do. The journey is personal, after all.

Much love, until next time.