“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” -Anaïs Nin

This article is for the people who have had that voice in their head saying “there’s something more out there and it’s calling your name,” since before they can remember. The article is for the thirsty hearts resisting their calling, the heads-on-fire trying to be “normal”. The big dreamers who overwhelm even themselves with the fire in their bellies. The raw souls who constantly get told they’re too much- and start to believe it. The still-in-the-closet Believers and the silent Seekers. This is for you. Because it’s time you stopped resisting by filling your life with crap. It’s time to make some space and surrender to the life your soul is actually screaming out for.

I’m not resisting, you tell us. I’m pushing, pushing every day. My to-do list runs off the page! My schedule is packed in like Tetris blocks! I could fill a book with crazy stories of my lovers past and I have an extremely active social life. I’m not resisting life one bit! 

That’s fair enough. And it’s a sound argument. One that certainly stands up straight in this world that has a boner for constant action! Progression! Drama!

But how many times a week do you catch yourself thinking ‘fuck this.’ When you’re busting yourself on a project you’d sooner throw out the window. When you’re on your fifth red wine or reaching for that next cigarette, even while thinking to yourself “I don’t even like how this feels.” When you’re mindlessly scrolling through Instagram with fatigued eyes. When you find yourself pursuing any low-vibration Jack, Joe or Jasmine who parades through your life and shows you a skerrick of affection.

Why? Because it keeps us distracted. It means we never have to stand still, always moving, moving, moving. Because when we’re not distracting ourselves with the crap… we begin to hear what our soul is really screaming out for. Keeping ourself small with a distracted life takes much less work and doesn’t require tectonic-plate shifting changes within us…

We’d rather have someone to text and entertain us, than no one at all, right?

Better to be doing a degree we hate and at least be heading somewhere than heading nowhere, right?

Better your head in a phone on your lunch break where you can be constantly entertained, than staring out at an empty street, right?

This world we live in fetishizes action. Instant Gratification. Hustle. Struggle. We feel like if our life isn’t going a zillion miles per hour we’re going to be left behind.

This world we live in fears empty spaces, surrender and flow.

Here’s the thing though, and the entire paradox of surrender and control that is so difficult for us to wrap our head around: the empty spaces, surrendering and flowy thing, is actually the key to entering that positive state which will get us to the connections and opportunities we truly want. The GOOD momentum.

Deep down you already know that the clues you seek, the answers you want, aren’t in lame vices like alcohol or drugs or cigarettes. They’re not in than that job that sucks your soul dry or that dude with the emotional range of a teaspoon. You know you weren’t put on this earth to tick off to-do lists until you die. It’s just a way of existing that we see again and again in the world around us, easy to comprehend and understand.

Your clues haven’t been left here. They have in fact been smashed into a million little pieces and thrown across the entire underside of the fucking night sky, left in the sand like crumbs on a thousand different beaches, spread across the sea like an oil slick. The magnitude of that can be terrifying. And the scariest thing is you don’t know where the next clue is coming from and you can’t control it.

But it’s in surrendering to the calls that truly excite your spirit that all the expansion, meaningful connections and awesome opportunities happen. They present themselves simply and beautifully when we are first honouring ourself. We can’t possibly control or predict them, we can only manifest them and have our eyes open to the clues as they come.  They might happen in a soul-bearing chats on rooftops with unexpected friends at 3am. They might come in messages scratched into a toilet door in a bar in Central America or overheard in a conversation in Italy or buried in a near-death experience in Bali. They might be hidden in small moments like walking home from work and hearing the wind hit some trees in a certain way, in a verse in a song that makes your throat catch, or an awkward both-trying-to-step-the-same-way situation with an intersecting stranger on a footpath.

The clues are hidden in the people you fall together with without discussion. Not the people you chase.

Think about it like spirals. That is how the good stuff actually comes in.

If you start by taking good care of your body and soul, showing up as the best version of yourself, investing your precious time with people and activities that do truly matter to you, everything starts to spiral up and opportunities that you would never have foreseen open up all around you! Opportunities your spirit truly responds to. Call it the law of attraction or something like that, but I swear that’s how it operates.

On the flipside, when you keep chasing the energy draining stuff and people in order to keep yourself occupied, you only find yourself spiralling down. Your energy, your glow and what you therefore attract or not are all affected. It all works together.

Life doesn’t have to be hard. Life doesn’t have to be an endless chasing game. Life doesn’t have to be a fight.

Life is perhaps about surrendering. Letting go of that resistance.
And by all means, we are not talking about sinking into inaction, but rather taking action from that place of smooth and natural energy. A place where things feel in flow.

“When I become aware that I’m in control mode, I imagine that I’m in a small canoe padding upstream, against the current. It’s hard. It’s a fight. That’s what control mode feels like to me. When I choose to let go and surrender, I visualize the boat tuning around, me dropping the oars, and floating downstream. I’m being gently pulled. ” – 

In the end, we are firm believers that we attract the vibes we put out. So why not cut the crap and go back to focusing on the good and the centre of your true self? All this goodness is already within you, and you know it. It is simply your mission now to keep doing what you need to make it shine from the inside out. The question is whether you can be brave enough to drop the oar, float into a little empty space, instead of constantly keeping yourself distracted. Then see where a fully energized, flow-state self will lead you..!

I promise you: it is better to have a cup half full of the good stuff, than completely full of crap.

Take a few minutes here, now, to ask yourself what is it that truly makes you feel like a million bucks…?
What are the activities ? The habits ? The relationships you should cultivate ? And which are the ones you need to let go of ?

Today is a great day to start the spiral up. 🙂

Cowritten by Erika & Caitlin