Hey there! It’s you-know-who (Daniel, in case you didn’t know who).
First things first I have to let you know that I experienced a hilarious and hurtful synchronicity this week. If you read last week’s rendition of The Vibe, I mentioned learning a valuable lesson from a baseball hitting my windshield about 18 years ago. Well, only two days after recounting that story, I was playing ball here in town and once again the Universe decided to speak through another speeding ball.
This time I was playing third base, a batter hit the ball, it bounced once off the ground… and hit me square in the throat – yea, right in the damn voice box. It knocked the wind out of me, but I recovered and continued playing.
Thanks to that little smack in the throat chakra, I lost the upper range of my singing voice for a few days which freaked me out because I’m playing Vinestock Music Festival this Sunday (it’s a good time – check it out here!). It’s still a bit sore, but I’m recovering thanks to some red light therapy and vocal exercises.
Since I believe that life happens for me, not to me, I had to analyze the situation and figure out the energetic meaning behind this incident.
Ultimately I think this happened to show me that a) I’ve been holding back in using my voice, both singing and speaking, and b) I need to get better at catching balls that are flying toward my f!@#in’ throat!
Speaking of holding back, this week I got a cool little insight that I’d love to share. Shall we?
playing off-leash
The other night after work I was playing in our backyard with our dog, Toby. Our yard isn’t fully fenced in so Toby, being the excitable flight risk that he is, has to wear a long leash tied to our porch so he can run around without running away.
Now, this leash owes us nothing. It’s been outside in the elements keeping Toby from chasing squirrels, rabbits and cars for 4 years. So when Toby ran for a ball and the leash snapped in half, I wasn’t surprised.
I quickly realized that Toby didn’t even notice the leash wasn’t actually keeping him tied to anything, yet he still played within the boundaries of where the leash would normally keep him. Iiiiiinteresting, I thought.
While sitting in the grass, soaking up the sunshine while my cute little pooch chewed on his ball, I got pretty introspective about the situation. He was happy where he was, but he had no idea he technically could have run free, beyond his former limitations.
This got me thinking… What if what’s holding us back isn’t holding us at all?
the invisible tether
We all have things we think hold us back. We all have things that keep us stuck in our limitations. We work hard to dissolve our energetic blockages so we can live a fulfilling life… but what if we just think those blocks and limitations are still there?
What if we’ve actually already evolved beyond them?
What if our invisible tether has been broken this whole time and we are just keeping ourselves in the safety zone out of habit?
Better yet… what if our invisible tether was never there to begin with?
Oooo, now we’re gettin’ deep.
As someone who has been constantly striving toward personal growth and expansion my whole life, I know one of the pitfalls is to constantly focus on the fact that you’re “doing the work”. This helps you to feel validated in your current situation – you are where you are, but you’re attempting to change for the better. But sometimes this can lead to feeling like you’re not good enough, don’t know enough, or don’t have the resources to step into the next phase.
Here’s the thing, though: what if you’re already in the next phase?
What if you’re not waiting for some big breakthrough, but have actually been experiencing bite-sized growth?
If you did have something that tied you down, what if it has gradually dissolved over time. If so, how long has it been gone for? How long have you been here in this new stage?
How much time have you wasted waiting to be ready instead of moving forward?
Sure, this was just the snapping of a rusted cable I tie my dog up to, but the second I saw the leash break, my instinct was that it was a metaphor for how a lot of us live our lives.
do it and don’t die
We humans tend to tie ourselves to our pasts and base our futures on where we’ve been. We obsess over “getting ready” to do the next thing. But what if we’re already ready? What if there’s no such thing as “ready”?
One of my great friends and mindset coach, Jenn Walker, has instilled in me the fact that our brains are only ever trying to save us. Our brains are very overdramatic and assume that everything is going to kill us. It makes sense when you consider that death is usually at the root cause of fear:
“If I quit my job to follow my dream, it might not work out, then I’ll be poor, then I can’t buy food, then I’ll starve and die”. Thanks for that, brain.
“If I post my opinion on social media, people may not agree. I’ll get attacked! I’ll get cancelled! I’ll lose my friends and family, end up on my own and die alone.” See? It’s so dramatic!
One of the best things Jenn has taught me is the phrase “do it and don’t die.”
This is a similar sentiment to the idea of “feel the fear and do it anyway” (a great book by Susan Jeffers). If we do the things we’ve been holding back from, the things we’re afraid of, we can teach our brains that we will, in fact, survive – then we start to rewire our brain to go beyond the fight or flight response that is constantly controlling our nervous systems. The more we “do it, and don’t die” the more freedom we experience. The more freedom we experience, the more expansion we experience.
We can remove ourselves from the leash we’ve tied ourselves up to. We can safely wander beyond the confines and familiarity of our backyard. We know the neighbourhood and the surrounding streets. We know the way home! We don’t need to tie ourselves up to feel safe.
In the embrace of freedom comes massive growth; we start to trust that we can handle anything, and that we can stay safe along the way. Can it be frightening to venture out beyond your former confines? Absolutely. But it can also be exhilarating.
Remember, the things that tie you down are illusions. Your leash is broken now (or it was never there in the first place). So be free – chase your dreams, chase some squirrels and live your best life. There’s nothing holding you back.