THE $1,000,000 QUESTION—CAN YOU TRUST YOURSELF TO ACTUALLY SHOW UP? AND WHY IT’S OKAY EVEN IF THE ANSWER ISN’T A RESOUNDING YES!

It’s easy to be happy when you’re feeling happy.

…to be friendly when you’re feeling friendly.

…to think healthy thoughts when you’re feeling healthy.

But what about the rest of the time?

Because let’s face it, as much as you and I would love to feel happy, friendly, healthy—and oh heck, let’s throw in inspired, on purpose and creative just for good measure—ALL of the time, the reality is that we just don’t. Sometimes we just feel down right crappy.

You don’t feel fantastic all the time. You’re not even supposed to. This is Planet Earth after all and there’s so much going on on so many levels it’s amazing that any of us are upright any of the time!

It’d be super nice if when you were feeling down or off, everything would just stop and wait for you to come back to center. But it doesn’t work like that.

Life keeps rolling forward and your relationship with yourself keeps moving. The energy that comes out of that relationship you have with yourself continues to grow too—sort of like compound interest.

How you relate to yourself and show up for yourself is the interest rate. And unlike the banking system, you can actually get a massive amount of negative interest piled up—and piled up pretty quickly to boot! And that really sucks because then you have to dig yourself out even to get back to even, let alone rise up!

Showing up for yourself, no matter how you feel, keeps your energy account from going in the red.

So, what does it look like to be able to trust yourself? What does it look like to be there for yourself even with those pesky fluctuations of mood? Even when you feel like you can’t be bothered?

Well for starters….

Enter stage left… Imperfection.

You’re not looking for perfection here. You’re looking for consistency.

We have this tendency to do things pretty differently in our relationships with ourselves than we would in any other relationship where we were taking care of someone. Imagine you were taking care of your 5 month old niece… She’s in the other room crying. As tempted as you may be to just disappear under a pillow and slip into some dark mercurial landscape, you don’t. It wouldn’t even occur to you. You get up, maybe dragging yourself into the other room, but you get up and you go. You tend to that little munchkin. You show up. You do it because that’s just what you do.

Every interaction you have with yourself adds up. You want to move toward the kind of relationship where you can count on yourself the same way your little niece can.

It matters if you say you’re going to do something and then you don’t. Maybe once or twice here or there isn’t such a big deal but if you get going to the point where basically your word to yourself is useless because you just don’t show up, then, it really matters.

The creative part of you, the part that wants to lean into expansion and growth, is going to start holding back. You’re not going to get as many creative ideas—whether they’re about a garden or a project or a relationship. Life’s going to start feeling blah. You may even start to feel depressed or anxious or disengaged.

You and I feel 10,000 times better when we’re engaged with life. When there’s a stream of creative energy coming and going from us, we feel alive. Alive, in flow, and on purpose. And that feels good!

So if things have dried up a bit in that river of creativity and energy lately, if your relationship with yourself has gotten the short end of the stick, or if you just want to get that river really flowing again, let’s set things up so that you can shift into that.

You were meant to thrive.

So there are 2 categories that jump right out as I think about this. One is the habit category and one is the dream category. You really can’t have one without the other—not in any kind of consistent/I can count on this kind of way.

We can all feel alive every now and then. We can all feel inspired and in flow but now we’re talking about taking you beyond accidental and into full on intentional happiness and flow.

Intentional happiness is built on a foundation of trust and inspiration.

  1. The habit category. This is the “this is just what I do”. It’ll be somewhat different for every person. This is the stuff that keeps you grounded. For me these are my daily habits—yoga, meditation, walking etc. They’re not optional. They go in the brushing my teeth category and when I skip them for whatever reason I feel it (and not in a good way!). The habit category is where you create a really strong self relationship. This is where you learn to trust that you’re really going to show up. You’re going to do what you say you’re going to do. And this is a big one. As tempted as you may be to just gloss over it, please don’t. This one’s a life changer.
  2. The dream category. This is how your soul is calling you forward. This is how life is wanting to express through you. It might be a longing to build a pond, rescue a dog, go to yoga school, start a business, or grow a business. It’s a dream. It nudges you. You get excited about it. You lean into it. It probably comes and goes. At first it feels exciting maybe. But then maybe it starts to feel impossible. Who are you to think you could do this? The habits you’ve created give you the staying power to show up for your dreams even when they feel impossible or unspeakable. The dream category is where you lean into making sure that you’ve dedicated dream/meditation time to just be with the energy of your dream. It’s where you say yes to an inkling you get during a meditation and then follow up and take that inspired action.

Your habits and dreams entwine. They become an energetic dance between action and non-action. Body and spirit. You create and hold space to hear within. You hold yourself accountable to doing the things you say you’re going to do.

Your habits support you and build up your stamina and strength to stay the course even when the road to your dreams turns into a bit of a monsoon soaked jungle trudge in a foot of mud—as road to dreams are wont to do!

Here at Balloon to the Moon we call these habits bookends and they’re game changers for my clients. It’s how they start and end every day. And it’s in the regularity of those habits that space is created for the dreams.

So my invitation to you today is to pick just one thing. It can even be a little thing. Make a commitment to it. Mark it in your calendar and do it. It can be as simple as close your eyes and take a deep breath every day at noon.

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