#jamesclearquote

[wordsusuallykeptinside]

True North

The single greatest piece of advice my Father has even given me is, “No one is going to get you through this life but you.” He continued by telling me that all of the opinions of the other kids in high school, the losers, the weirdos, the popular kids, and even my friends, did not matter. The only person who could get me where I wanted to go in life was me. I had to do what was right for me. I think it’s safe to say that when we are in high school we are acutely and painfully aware that people around us have opinions about how we look, what we do or say and who we hang out with. Other people’s opinions at that time in our lives mean more to us than breathing. My father’s statement blew all of that a part and blew my mind in ways that I’m just starting to understand now in my 30s. He was right. None of those people had any bearing on my actual life.  The bitchy girls’ opinions and dislike of me for reasons I still don’t fully understand had absolutely no weight on how my life unfolded. My choices made things happen for me, and consequentially my choices also made things not happen for me.

 From then on I took that advice and sewed it into the very fabric of my being.What happened at first was that I carried a sort of, “I don’t give a fuck what you think” attitude. The ironic thing is, there still remained the Ego that very much cared what people thought. My mind always had to argue back and forth about if something mattered or it didn’t. I would weigh the options, analyze the data in front of me, and make a decision: “nope, I don’t care what people will think about this” or “yes, I very much care what people will think of this so let’s put it in the right light”.

 My late teens to early 20’s  were gong show of caring either too much or too little. I either gave all my fucks away or I had absolutely zero. There was rarely a middle ground. That, I found, can lead to poor decision making. When you’re too polar about things and it all kind of crumbles into people really not knowing what to think of you so they mostly just shun you.This lead to me to get to know my “inner knowing”.That’s the thing I call my gut feeling (and I’m pretty sure Glennon Doyle does too), you know, that ”YES this is absolutely what I need to do” feeling. A fact of life is that every once and while you gotta make clear decisions for yourself if you want to honor that very special inner knowing inside of you. It was in this stage of my life that I got tired of the polar madness and followed that inner knowing big-time.

 I had gone to University only to find out that the culture brought out parts of myself I really didn’t like and that that form of education was not for me. I’m not into paying an obscene amount of money to learn how to write one helluva essay, study a professor’s thesis, and on my downtime drink myself into oblivion. So I quit. I dropped out and made the first decision solely for myself with zero inkling as to what was next. Well, what happened next was that I followed my inner knowing and moved to Alberta to be with my then boyfriend, now husband. At the time people thought I was absolutely coo-coo. Like totally bat-shit crazy. If I had listened to them,  I’m quite certain I would still be living in my hometown. And to be completely honest, I’m really not sure where I would have ended up. But my inner knowing what telling me that this was a time where I couldn’t give a shit what they thought. I had to do this for me to get me where I needed to be. It was that decision that rooted my life in such a way that I got to find out so much more about myself.

 I have been in Alberta for 14 years now. In that time I have tried to be a Nutritional Consultant, Pharmacy Assistant, Sales Associate, Health Coach, MLM Star (that was a yucky period), Sign and T-Shirt Maker, and Yogi Extraordinaire. I tried all of those not because I was trying to be someone else but because I was trying to find what was “reasonable”.  What I found was through all of those careers I was learning about myself. I’m sure there are people who think I’m flaky, that I can’t stick to anything, or that I am unfocused. But I think I was brave enough to try something that I thought I really might like, to let my creativity shine, or learn something new. Now I know that it was all a process to find way back to my real purpose.  

 Here’s the thing, the more you try and fail, the more you will learn about yourself. Success rarely gives you any pearls of knowledge and it rarely teaches you anything about yourself. I don’t think I was ever learning when things were going really well for me. I was learning when I had to figure out how I was going to pick myself back up and try again or try something completely different. I truly believe trying new things really adds to the fabric of your being. It gives you more texture.  

 What I’ve learned so far is that I am a creative person. I am someone who has to make things and put them out into the world. I don’t like following other people’s rules and I don’t like making money for someone else before me. I want to be in control of my life, my time, and what I put my focus or energy into. Those are my bottom lines. And I feel nothing empowers all of those things more than writing. I think the written word is the lifeblood to all of it. So.. I’m writing. I’m calling myself a writer. God, that feels good to say!  I am a writer and I am finally putting my energy into the thing I have loved for oh, so long. I think my first diary was at 12. I started writing poetry at 13 or so, and I took every writing class I could until University. Along with drama/theatre, writing has been a longtime love affair that I just couldn’t let myself commit to because I was too busy listening to others tell me that it wasn’t the “reasonable” career. And there it was...the thing I listened to without fully realizing it. A dumb opinion. It was subtle don’t you think? That life-changing negative narrative. So subtle that I didn’t fully comprehend what I was doing until recently  It was that narrative that I cared about too much. I gave way to many fucks away to that narrative and I steered away from my own True North.

 I, like so many other people, let go of the things I loved because I believed when I was told that it wasn’t the “logical choice”.

 “There’s no way you can make real money doing that!”

 “You’ll be a starving artist.”

 … and most dreadfully, “That’s not a career that will get you anywhere in life.”

 I bought into it totally forgetting my father’s words. When all along I should have trusted in myself and my abilities. Instead of trusting my inner knowing, I wrapped myself in someone else’s belief that I should find something else to fulfill me. That lead to a lot of searching in the wrong directions. But in some weird way, it also lead to me back the truth of who I am. With every new thing that I tried and failed at, I took off a layer of false expectations. With every new avenue I traveled, I found out that I had capabilities that I didn’t know were there and that I am stronger than I ever believed.  

 It’s taken me until now to get this all somewhat figured out. Hind-sight really is 20/20, folks.  Trust me when I say I’ve analyzed this one to death. But It’s really as simple as following that inner knowing and not listening to the naysayers. Not listening to the doubt that your Ego can fill you with. Trial and error will teach you more about yourself than never trying. It will also teach you how to really listen to your own inner knowing because that’s the thing that will guide you to the path that is best for you.

 Now, I stand in my life knowing more about myself than I ever have (due to those trial and errors) and knowing my father’s words still ring true. No one is going to get me through this life but me. So I will write and I will love myself through whatever mistakes I make along the way, but I will be happy because it’s what I really, really want to do. There’s something exciting about living and “unreasonable” or “illogical” life.  What will I write about? The simple answer is I’m not sure. But it’s quotes like this that make me feel really good about my journey:

 “Nobody is rooting for you to fail.”

You may succeed. You may fail. But, for the most part, nobody cares one way or the other.

This is good. The world is big and you are small, which means you can chase your dreams with little worry for what people think.” - James Clear