What if my path is different?

What if my path is……… different?

Different than what I thought it would be.

Different than what those closest to me thought it would be.

Different than what society expects of me.

Different from what I want it to be.

What if, at age 40, my path is still revealing itself? Can I surrender deeply enough to even see this path? Do I have the courage and perseverance to walk this path? Will I give myself the permission to walk this path?

What happens if I’m not perfect?

What happens if I’m not perfect?

Nothing.

Nothing happens if I’m not perfect. Obviously. Because I’m not perfect.

I missed a day of publishing for the first time since I committed to writing every day again.

Woke up this morning. Realized it. Felt sad and disappointed. Then remembered how truly special yesterday was.

I will remember the highlights of yesterday far longer than I’ll remember not publishing a post, and I’m perfectly ok with that.

What if I already broke my commitments for the New Year?

With 100% certainty, I know that there are people who broke their New Year’s resolutions already this year. Day 2 and done. Oh well, maybe next year.

I know because I have been one of those folks.

It was perfection or nothing.

“I already blew it. I’ll start next year, or next month, or next week, later, tomorrow.” A constant cycle of breaking integrity with myself, justifying and waiting for a fresh start.

Yesterday, I had one of the worst headaches of my life out of nowhere. Perhaps a somatic reminder of when I used to drink and be hung over all day New Years. My New Year’s Day plans went out the window.

Instead of waiting until next year and letting my perfectionist derail everything, I just let it go. This is a journey, I’m not perfect and today is a new day.

What if who I hoped to be was always me?

It’s been a minute since I’ve published anything. 23 months to be precise. It feels like nothing has changed and everything has changed all at once.

My last post was titled “What happens in the middle of transformation?” Appropriate fucking title John. Collectively and individually we’re in the middle of the transition from the old story to the new. Two years later and I can finally start to answer this question for me individually. In the middle of transformation is a lot of beauty, magic, synchronicity, tragedy, shit sandwiches, heart break, and grief mixed in with some of the most challenging years of my life.

I’m really proud of how I showed up at certain times. I am also ashamed of others. I needed to get my ass kicked by the universe, to get humbled and to find whole new levels of surrender that I didn't even know existed. I’ve had a powerful vision inside of me for years and I’ve been too afraid to take a stand for it. I don’t even like typing that let alone the thought of publishing it, yet here we are.

This past weekend, I was in the middle of a solo meditation retreat to work on a few things, and I heard a song that I’ve heard many times before. But this time it hit different. This is the opening line:

“What if who I hoped to be was always me?”

I’ve been in the middle of this transformation for years, but what if I’m already who I’m trying to transform into? What if I am already the butterfly? What if who I hoped to one day be is already me right now in this exact moment? Yeah John, what if?

I still have a long way to go on this journey, a lot more to learn and even more to embody. A lot of questions and only a few more answers than I’ve previously had access to.

And.

I’m already exactly where I need to be. Exactly who I need to be. Doing exactly what I need to be doing. And that is enough.

What if we choose this?

I sent this Bonus Thought out to my newsletter subscribers on Monday. I thought it was worth publishing the entire piece, and since then have read several articles and posts that show the data behind this. Without further ado, here we go...

==

I’m going to go a bit off the deep end here for a moment, so hang on.

I read something today that sparked an interesting line of thinking. If we look at all this forced isolation and economic shutdown from a climate perspective, this is going to be a super healing time period for our planet.

What if we all collectively decided to do something like this once a year. We all shut it down and reduce travel, manufacturing and consumption for some short period of time. It could decelerate our carbon footprint by years.

Also, the added bonus of choosing to go into “shelter from home” mode is that we are making the choice. And when have the mindset of making the choice ourselves, it’s much more agreeable and acceptable than someone else forcing it upon us.

So from now on, I’ve decided to take the mindset of all of this isolation and self-sheltering is not only to help flatten the curve and save lives, but to help heal the planet. Times two multiplier for the win!