Not a skill.

The skill is to learn to tolerate the experience. And the reason the skill is essential is because it is a necessary condition for your soul to thrive.

The experience of courage is one of aliveness that often includes sweat, elevated heart rate, helpful stress, and body chemicals that are preparing you to contribute. The more you can learn to tolerate, or better yet, value and celebrate this vital experience, the more freedom and, ironically, ease you will feel.

What if you fully allowed the experience of courage to permeate your life?

We usually don’t want to let go because we value something at stake- our comfort zone, our “rightness,” or a season of a relationship we have loved.

An inherent loss comes from letting go, which can bring any wave of emotions and body sensations like sadness, regret, or fear, to name a few. Sometimes the wave is small, sometimes it is big. Sometimes it crashes with force and power quickly, sometimes it softly and slowly disappears back into the ocean as a gradual process of the flow. Our job is not to control the wave; our work is to notice it, be present with it, and work with it, not against it, so we can go over it, under it, or ride it.

The beauty of releasing control is that it frees us up to dance with the beautiful waves of joy, ease, freedom, contentment, and wonder as well. We are meant to experience the vast ocean of life, becoming like it, undisturbed by the little details of what is coming and going because we are a part of the overall flow, knowing our role is to surrender.

Where can you let go so you can be and allow the flow?

The cells of our body are designed to heal, connect, grow, and let go, helping us thrive. They do so by having selectively permeable barriers, sometimes letting things in and out and sometimes not.

We are made of cells, and we are designed to do the same as they are: heal, connect, grow, and let go. We do this by being fluid and in the moment, not rigid.

Boundaries can be present-moment choices, they do not need to be permenant decisions. Trust yourself and your innate, intuitive wisdom when it comes to what to allow in and let go of right now.

What if you gave yourself permission to trust and dance with your boundaries?

Learning to love yourself truly is the ultimate form of “protecting” yourself.

When you choose to love yourself unconditionally and gently, you don’t have to fear your big emotions because they don’t disqualify you from being worthy of love. You can feel and receive the love you are giving yourself simultaneously. The ability to both give and receive this gift can help you navigate challenges as you learn and grow in loving others.

Additionally, as you expand your capacity to love yourself, you will notice you can more easily discern when to say no, say yes, share your perspective, or let things go with less drama or resistance. This self-listening protects you from the potential future repercussions of overriding your inner wisdom.

What if you shifted from fearing your feelings to thoughtfully loving yourself instead?

Just like the balance between darkness and light that creates the fullness of a day, relationships are meant to have a dynamic and fluid balance of space and closeness to provide the richness of experience they are meant to gift us.

The space you take to your Self is designed to connect you to Love and your Source, which connects you to your creativity. Co-creation is the purpose of all life-giving relationships, and your life's purpose is co-creation.

Just as co-creation requires space, space serves its true purpose when you use it to reconnect to your ability to love others, which is what co-creation is really about.

We each have a tendency towards closeness or space, and our job is to make sure we find our balance if we want to live happy lives.

What do you require right now, closeness or space, to live in your dynamic, creative balance?

Is that it will not lead you down the safe path. It will inevitably lead you to and through heartbreak, yet it is designed this way because you need heartbreak to learn to love more deeply.

Each time we fear heartbreak or experience heartbreak, we have the opportunity to remember we are in the process of returning to our most loving state. When we can love without attachment to the outcome, we are guaranteeing ourselves lives full of love, which includes heartbreak.

What if you could give your heart fully to life rather than play it safe and never love, which is the same as never living?

People are not supposed to like everything you do. You are not even supposed to like everything you think, feel, and do. However, we have been trained to create lives around avoiding what we don’t like when, really, our relationship with things that we don’t like or that other people don’t like holds our greatest opportunity to learn to love.

We become fixated on what we don’t like when we forget that we can have love regardless. What if in the moments you didn’t like what you were experiencing, or someone else didn’t like what you said or did, you could just let that happen and focus on love instead?

Our small personalities will always dislike things. This doesn’t mean that the truth, which is love, goes away. Would you be willing to stop wasting your energy resisting what is meant to happen and harness it to focus on what is steady and true instead?

If you choose to love now, you won’t need to look back on this moment with regret.

If you trust yourself to love, you don’t need to fear the future.

Love helps us let go, and letting go helps us love. When there is no regret and no fear, there is love.

What is it time for you to love so you can let go?

Holding on to the idea that figuring out the future will make you happy keeps you from receiving the present moment, which is the only place that life is.

Instead of believing that there is something to figure out about the future, consider that the answer is in the mystery of the now.

Later will also be now, and then there will be another later. What if instead of living for later, you lived for now?

The natural world is always working to change things in the direction of love- healing, connecting, regenerating, growing. Our job is to learn to facilitate that change rather than impede it. The fastest way to do that is to hold a vision for the future where all of those intentions of love have succeeded and take actions and host conversations that you feel bring us closer to that future.

With your vision being the place to start, you might consider beginning to audit your visions of what is possible for the future. What if the things you imagined really were the foundation for your life and the future?

Fear is holding us back.

There is a difference between your inner wisdom telling you something isn’t worth the risk and the voice of fear telling you to stay small. Identifying which voice is guiding you can give you the freedom to move forward either way.

If you sense in, is your wisdom or fear keeping you where you are?

Are you open to possibilities or closed to them?

You can either see the future as full of wonder or full of the past. If you bring wonder, you get possibilities. If you bring the past, you get resignation. You choose what you get by choosing what you bring.

It is easier to bring the past as it is the most familiar and therefore takes the least creativity. Yet, you are designed to be creative, so wonder is more fulfilling.

What if the thing you gave up on is still unfolding?

Years ago, someone asked me a question that changed my life, and it is time for it to change my life again.

They said, “If you had to give a speech to high school graduates, what would your message be?” My response was, “Fear will try to stop you. Go anyways.” At that moment, I realized that the only reason I wasn’t taking action on what I wanted was because I was scared. That was the day I decided to move toward my dream, and it changed everything.

Today, I find myself scared again, so I am listening to the words of wisdom I gave myself 14 years ago. I don’t need to learn more stuff or become more certain, I need to do what I already know to do.

I share this because often, we need to be reminded of what we know, not learn something new. We need to listen to our own advice and take our own medicine.

What if you just listened to your own advice instead of waiting for someone or something else to make your decision?

The benevolent forces at play are always asking you to let go.

If you feel stuck, anxious, burdened, resentful, or worried, you likely need to let go of something. And if you are looking for permission to do so, know that not only do you already have these forces’ blessing, it is your spiritual responsibility to do so. You cannot be who you are meant to be if you are holding on to something that isn’t yours to hold on to.

Whether it is an unforgiveness, a judgment, a belief, a role, a worry, an obligation, a relationship, a role, or a business, we are meant to let go so we can be present and be the gift we are at our essence, which is love.

The stuckness will stay until you call on the courage within you to let go. What if you already had the permission to let go that you have been waiting for?

If you are not willing to:

• Be comfortable with discomfort

• Have tough conversations

• Do things that scare you

• Apologize when you don’t want to

• Speak up when you’re nervous

• Take total responsibility for making the changes you seek

• Appreciate yourself when one else does

Then, none of the other work matters. You can study, consume, and think about change all you want, and none of it will change things if you aren’t willing to do the things most people won’t do.

Where do you simply need to be willing to be uncomfortable to create the change you crave?

There are forces way bigger than your thinking mind at play, and your body and imagination have the power to begin to tune into them and work with them. This is how your actions get propelled forward with momentum.

Relying only on your own ideas might limit you. Instead of asking yourself what you want to happen, ask yourself, what wants to happen. The forces of love, wholeness, possibility, and commitment are ready to guide you if you ask.

Where is it time to let go of your agenda and sense what wants to happen?

Learning to take space to do nothing besides be and allow is essential if you want to stay connected to the things that are most important to you.

We are designed to receive just as we are designed to do and give. If we create imbalance in our lives by always staying busy with doing and giving, we will eventually have to drop the ball on something important to us, because we are not designed to operate at that velocity.

Imbalance will manifest as a sort of rebellion, whether in your body, mind, or soul. That rebellion will always cause an unhelpful disruption as a means of getting your attention. When we practice letting go and receiving ahead of time, we can see imbalances before they take the wheel and we can make new choices to steer things in the direction of love.

What might it look like for you to let go a little roday, so you dont have to let go of what’s important?

Resenting where you are does not help you get where you want to go; in fact, it might even prevent you from seeing where you truly want to go.

It is easy to feel down when things look different than you would like, yet resenting the people, places, and things in your life will only make you heavier, making it more challenging to create change.

Opportunity responds to gratitude, and gratitude helps us see possibility. Each step on your path is a step on your path; if it weren’t there, you wouldn’t have a path. Resenting the steps wastes energy, especially if you want to enjoy the journey.

What might happen if you released the heaviness of shoulds and should’ts and used gratitude as a springboard to get to where you are going next?

Choosing to play it safe is the same as choosing to play it scared.

When we take the “safe” route, we operate out of fear. As long as we let fear stop us, we stay trapped in a place of fear. To free ourselves, we must move towards faith and act on what inspires us.

What might life be like if you didn’t organize it around staying as “safe” as possible?

The little bits of courage you practice everyday compound into a courageous life. There are infinite opportunities for you to have what you dream of, yet they are only truly opportunities if you have taken the brave steps to set yourself up to seize them.

Courage not only compounds; it becomes easier. When you practice courage every day, doing the little things you feel scared to do or say, those things eventually become easy. From this foundation, courageous actions are available in new places, setting you up to embrace opportunities and see new possibilities with more repose.

What tiny courageous thing can you do today that could open the floodgates to more bold action?