What got you here is not what will get you there. It's a phrase I hear over and over again at work and have heard at school, in past roles and in other aspects of my life. While this is critically true in most cases there are others where what got me there did not get me here and maybe I need to pick up behaviours, ways of thinking that used to permeate who I was.
Over the past few days I've put a lot of time into what was different then, when risk taking and unbridled potential filled my life. What was so different then that is no longer part of who I am? Through deep scientific process I have pinpointed at least one piece of the puzzle. I used to have a deep belief in pronoia. Pronoia is the belief that the world is conspiring in your favour. It was a phrase that I picked up when I sold stretchy pants and practiced yoga daily. Pronoia was how I lived my life in my early twenties and I am not exactly sure when I stopped believing.
I am the luckiest person I know and I understood this to my core at one time. Though I have never won the lottery I grew up with a solid understanding that things work out for me, that the universe is letting things unfold because that is what is meant to be, there will be no failure, no one will let me fall too far. I lived with an unseen safety net that let me grow bold. I lived in many cities between the age of 16 and 28. I've taken and quit jobs on a gut feeling and have yet to be betrayed by my decisions. I've done things that on paper seem foolish but that my intuition was certain about. Somewhere in the last few years I've lost this belief. I have become wrapped up in worry, about not being able to afford a house or a wedding when I am happily renting and not at all engaged. I have lost sleep over if one job will work out or not because I need to start building tenure on my resume. While these things are important they are all about the end and not at all about the journey. Worrying about them is not practicing the trust that brings freedom, that kind of worry causes stress and sadness and pain.
Life is never going to be just as you planned or just what we see on TV. Life is messy and scary and we wake up to have the choice every second of the day whether to trust that it will all work out or to live in fear that it might not. I choose chocolate.
Over the past few days I've put a lot of time into what was different then, when risk taking and unbridled potential filled my life. What was so different then that is no longer part of who I am? Through deep scientific process I have pinpointed at least one piece of the puzzle. I used to have a deep belief in pronoia. Pronoia is the belief that the world is conspiring in your favour. It was a phrase that I picked up when I sold stretchy pants and practiced yoga daily. Pronoia was how I lived my life in my early twenties and I am not exactly sure when I stopped believing.
I am the luckiest person I know and I understood this to my core at one time. Though I have never won the lottery I grew up with a solid understanding that things work out for me, that the universe is letting things unfold because that is what is meant to be, there will be no failure, no one will let me fall too far. I lived with an unseen safety net that let me grow bold. I lived in many cities between the age of 16 and 28. I've taken and quit jobs on a gut feeling and have yet to be betrayed by my decisions. I've done things that on paper seem foolish but that my intuition was certain about. Somewhere in the last few years I've lost this belief. I have become wrapped up in worry, about not being able to afford a house or a wedding when I am happily renting and not at all engaged. I have lost sleep over if one job will work out or not because I need to start building tenure on my resume. While these things are important they are all about the end and not at all about the journey. Worrying about them is not practicing the trust that brings freedom, that kind of worry causes stress and sadness and pain.
Life is never going to be just as you planned or just what we see on TV. Life is messy and scary and we wake up to have the choice every second of the day whether to trust that it will all work out or to live in fear that it might not. I choose chocolate.
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