To whoever needs to hear it: YOu cannot be everything for everyone. You are, however, Your everything.

It is a daunting thought to consider that your life is just that: yours. Interestingly enough, when I remember that concept, I feel a rush of relief. I feel empowered. My life can only be lived by me… so why on earth would I waste my precious time on this planet waiting for other people’s permission to go out and LIVE IT?

I think we all do this more than we would like to admit. We rattle off the logistical reasons why we must consider other people’s feelings and how the way that we live affects the lives of others. I noticed more recently how women in particular, myself most certainly included, are more inclined to torture ourselves worrying about how our actions will be received. In a lot of ways, that thinking is pure bull sh*t.

Are we really going to act like someone living their best, most vibrant, truest life is negative? Before you even think to play “Devil’s advocate” and say that someone’s truth might be of an evil nature, consider a newborn baby. As a newborn enters the world, it is celebrated as perfect and good by nature of being. We are taught fear; we are born knowing love. To live your most authentic life is to unlearn the fears and prejudices that blockade us from our divine oneness with the world around us.

We all have sh*t to heal. Hurt people hurt people. Much of the wounds that plague us have been inherited or projected onto us. But, let’s not get it twisted: you are your purpose. You owe it to yourself first and foremost to be able to look in the mirror and feel contentment with your existence.

So often, out of fear, we hand over the keys to our happiness to other people. We convince ourselves that we are locked away from accessing our dreams, so we bang and bang on the door wondering why we cannot tap into that juicy truth and joy… when it is us holding ourselves back. We are scared to take back the keys because a part of us is too afraid of the unknown to explore what lies beyond the other side of the door.

Ask yourself: What would I do if I woke up and only lived for myself? If all other factors faded away, what would I live for? What would I die for?

Your soul chose this life. This flesh body. This timing. You cannot live your purpose until you are ready to BE YOUR PURPOSE. Consider the amount of brain power we use trying to make uncertainties certain. Wondering if they’ll text us back. Praying that they’ll like us. Hoping that people will think we are “good enough.” Stressing over how we will get there. Remaining stuck in place because in all that worrying about how we will get what we want, we find ourselves in analysis-paralysis, so fearful that we won’t take the “right” next step that we don’t take one at all.

What if you failed? What if you quit? What if you took the blueprint you’ve carefully laid out leading up to this moment and scratched it? What if you removed tasks from your checklist instead of adding them?

What is the worst thing that could happen?

I can’t think of anything worse than waking up wrinkly and gray and just know that I was living someone else’s life. Measuring my own life with someone else’s tape measurer and metrics. It is our responsibility not to crush our own dreams and stifle our own souls.

I am not sure that I am a believer in the idea that you cannot love someone unless you love yourself. I do believe, though, that other’s cannot know you if you don’t take the time to know you. We cannot feel the absolutely delicious, luxurious love that results from being known right down to the bone if we don’t have the courage to face ourselves. Embrace ourselves. Be ourselves. Also, we don’t need to get wrapped up in understanding every facet or bruise there is to our being. It is the awareness that stems from spending time with ourselves that allows us to greet our spirit, the consciousness behind—but separate from—our thoughts. To know ourselves is to observe and pay witness to our being, all from a lens of curiosity and not from the perspective of judgment. We will never grasp our divinity and being and capacity and infiniteness. It is beyond our human capacity to do so. What we can do, though, is be who we were created to be. We can embody and emulate love, the spirit that we were born knowing. We can unlearn who we were told we should be and re-learn who we were designed to be.

You are your own damn everything. No one is more you than you. No one can understand you the way you do. I guarantee that the love you are seeking to give or receive from other’s is precisely the love you wish you would give yourself.

Forget who you will disappoint. Take the risk. Get your cute a$$ in the driver’s seat. Ask yourself what you’re afraid of. Discern for yourself what sets your soul on fire.

As my inspiration Glennon Doyle writes in her smashing bestseller Untamed,

“Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”

She relates that confidence is loyalty (fidelity) to one’s self. No one is responsible for creating a life for you that you cannot wait to wake up to. Hell, if they did, it still wouldn’t cut it— it’d be their dream, not yours. Think of how beautiful and heartwarming it feels to watch someone you love do something that they love. You chasing your dreams might scare the people you love a bit, but they’ll come around. Maybe I am a hopeless optimist, but I just so firmly believe that the people who really love us, the people who are meant to surround us, always come around. And, hey, better late than never.

The beauty of being your own everything is that you are no longer left waiting up for others to love you because you already love the HELL OUTTA YOURSELF. You aren’t concerned about finding others to complete because you’re keenly aware of your wholeness. So, go ahead and do it. Be your own everything. Because, well, why not? You’ve got the love to do it. It was always (in) you.

ALLLLL OF MY LOVE, FI

#freetobefi #freetobeus #getuntamed