Timelines, Forcing Life, Following Your Intuition, and Placing Expectations
Me at 20, absolutely clueless as to what the next ten years will bring :)
“I believe our intuition puts logic into consideration so we don’t need to dwell on it ourselves.”
I just turned 30 recently and that had me thinking about all the things I’ve learned in my 20’s. I started to build out a list and was going to write a blog post, “10 Things I Learned in My 20’s”. But, as I was writing it, 10 turned into 20 and 20 turned into 30, so I decided to scratch that idea and not place a limit on sharing what I’ve learned. Instead, the next series of blog posts will be a random compilation of things I’ve learned and I hope you find them just as helpful as I‘ve found them to be in my life.
Don’t put yourself on a timeline.
When I left for my first contract working on the cruise ship, I said, “I’ll press pause on school and go back after this one contract.” Although, I had so much fun and wasn’t ready to go back, I wanted to keep skating professionally and traveling the world. So one contract led to another and another, but I was constantly putting pressure on myself to go back to school before “it was too late”.
I wasn’t allowing myself to enjoy where I was because I was trying to force a timeline on myself that just wasn’t right for me. If I had stuck to that timeline, my life would have unfolded in a completely different way – a way that I don’t believe would have led me to the life I’m living now.
If I believed I should live according to society’s timeline, I should be married with a kid and a house by now. But if I had followed through with that, I would have married the wrong guy and I would have missed out on some of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life.
Just because others are living their lives according to a certain timeline, doesn’t mean that timeline is right for you. Plus, it pulls you out of living in the now, and prevents you from truly appreciating the now in which you are living. It makes you feel like you aren’t where you should be or puts pressure on you to get somewhere other than where you are – which leaves you feeling constantly dissatisfied and unable to enjoy the journey of life to the absolute fullest.
I believe timelines lead us to force our lives to be a certain way, whether it feels right or not, whether it IS right or not. Which leads me to my next lesson learned…
Nothing good in life is forced.
To be honest, I used to force things. I used to force fun, force my days to unfold “perfectly”, force people to like me, force my body to look a certain way…
Through lots of meditating, I was able to realize that the best things in life are natural. The best connections feel natural. The best days unfold naturally. The best of anything is natural. Let’s be real, can you really enjoy anything that feels forced?
Personally, I no longer want anything to feel forced in my life and have made a promise to myself that I won’t allow things into my life if they do feel forced.
I don’t want to force my body to look a certain way. I don’t want to force a guy to like me. I don’t want to force someone to hang out with me. I don’t want to force a client to work with me. If a guy likes me or a client wants to work with me…great! But if they don’t, that’s okay, too.
This doesn’t mean I just wait for things to fall into my lap – I still work hard to make things happen. But I pay attention to the energy I feel when I’m working for it. And again, this brings me to the next lesson learned.
Trust and follow your intuition.
A part of knowing whether something is forced, or if it’s right or wrong for you is by following your intuition. And to be honest, my intuition has never let me down. On the other hand, going against my intuition has always proved to me the importance of listening to it…AKA things always go wrong when I don’t trust and follow it.
When I made the decision to work for myself, my dad was challenging my decision. He was thinking about it logically and I was following my intuition. At the time, I only had one big client lined up and that was it. I already wasn’t making a lot of money at my job and I would be making even less. But my intuition was telling me to go for it.
I specifically remember the conversation I was having with my dad where he was talking me through it logically and I stopped him and said, “Dad, when has following my intuition ever failed me?” And his response was, “You’re right, I’m not sure why I’m questioning you.”
Working for myself for just over one year, I’ve cultivated clients who are best-selling authors and the top thought leaders in their fields…all thanks to following my intuition. I couldn’t imagine if I had followed my dad’s logical thinking…I would still be sitting at that same desk, doing the same thing that was making me so unhappy and preventing me from developing the lifestyle I wanted for myself.
That’s why following my intuition is how I make 100% of my decisions. I don’t sit and think about it logically, I think about whether or not it feels right. I believe our intuition puts logic into consideration so we don’t need to dwell on it ourselves.
If I thought logically, I wouldn’t have done 90% of the things I did in my 20’s. Which would be a huge shame.
When we think logically, most of us come up with all the reasons why something wouldn’t work rather than focusing on the reasons why it COULD work. Or, we convince ourselves something is right for us because it looks right “on paper”. But the thing about logic is that it doesn’t know you – it doesn’t have any idea what you actually want and how you actually feel. What looks good on paper won’t necessarily feel right to you.
Let go of expectations.
The reality is, the only thing you are 100% in control of is you. You can’t control the actions of another person, you can’t control certain outcomes, and you can’t even always control how your day will unfold.
That’s why I realized I needed to quit placing expectations on things that are outside of myself. I’ve learned the more you expect from anyone or anything, the more you will feel let down.
I used to place high expectations on others, thinking they were better friends than they were, and being let down when I found out they weren’t. I used to place high expectations on the day in front of me, planning out exactly how I want it to unfold, and being leg down when things didn’t go as I had planned. I used to place high expectations on everything from vacations to something as simple as a cup of coffee.
The issue with my expectations is that I would build something up to be this amazing thing in my head, and when the reality of it didn’t match my expectation, I was so unhappy. And by constantly placing those expectations, I was constantly unhappy.
One day I finally realized that I needed to just let things be as they are.
Instead of expecting a cup of coffee to be absolutely amazing, I just needed to let the coffee be exactly what it was…a cup of coffee. And if it ended up to be absolutely amazing, sweet! But if it didn’t, I had zero expectations of what the cup of coffee would be, so if was awful, I was still happy to have a cup of coffee sitting in front of me.
That’s true with anything, people and things. Just let them be exactly what are, and accept them for just that. Take everything and everyone as they come and don’t expect them to be more or less, just let them be.