There is nothing wrong with you.

You are not broken.

There is nothing about yourself that you need to fix regardless of what that little voice in your head says about it.

How do you feel when you think about the area where you feel you have no choice?

What is choice? We’re making choices all day long, but we may not even realize it. In fact, a choice is only a choice if there’s something else we could choose. (We could have this or that.)

Unless we perceive at least two options in front of us, it may not feel like we have any choice at all. For a lot of people, that’s exactly how they feel in their lives. They get up, go to work, take care of their kids, take care of their parents, go to the grocery store, cook dinner, pay the bills. Mostly, they feel like they have no choice but to do those things.

I shared with you last week that one of my new practices is walking the block every day. I have to take my dog out anyway, so this is an easy everyday thing for me. For me, it’s every day, sometime in the middle of the day, when I take my dog outside, I walk the apartment block. My why is because I’m committed to moving my body more often.

When I did an assessment of my life and did my “wheel of life” exercise, the one area that seemed evidently lopsided was the area of health and fitness. I have a lot of stability and practice in certain aspects of my life. But in the area of my overall well-being and fitness, all my practices have really dropped off.

This is an area I’ve identified where I want to grow. I want to be better at doing boring shit. I can easily get excited. If I get a new idea or have a project to work on, I can jump right into it with super enthusiasm. I can get a lot of things done really quickly.

See, I believe there's life that wants to live through me. that I’m co-creating with something bigger than myself. That there's a universal force—a life force, Spirit, God, whatever you want to call it—that is dancing with me and wanting to come through me.

I’ve long had a desire to trust that. In so many ways in my life, I have. I’ve taken leaps of faith because I was clear that Spirit was guiding me to do so.

I left that weekend in a completely different energy. I gave up being nice on behalf of being clear which I also recognize now is kind. Clear is kind. I don't need to be nice. What people deserve and what I deserve is to be clear.

I would frantically put pieces together to try to make myself feel okay. And I started to notice, as I became more aware of that default and how it was playing out, that underneath it was a great deal of fear. Fear that if I'm not hustling to make it happen, if I'm not putting the pieces in place the way I think they should be, then I'm going to go without. I won't have what I want. Life won't turn out the way I had hoped. I'll be missing something that really matters to me.

Oftentimes, our heart is going to ask us to do things that don't make sense or that don’t fit within the conventional ideas of how we should live or how life should look.

This is what I teach people — trust your heart & let it light the way! So, at the end of last year, when my partner of nine years told me that he felt he needed to hit the pause button on our relationship, I was surprised.

So, if you want to be more brave in your life, work, relationships, and how you show up in the world, that’s a muscle you can build. First and foremost, make a choice. Choose to be brave.

Bravery is acknowledging the risk involved and then taking the action anyway because it’s aligned with your values and who you want to be in the world.

Now, that takes a level of discernment on our part, to be able to weigh for ourselves if the risk involved is worth the potential payoff. What I find to be true in my own life is that when it comes to matters of the heart, in the places life is calling me forward, there is an inherent level of risk involved in order to get to the next level. Oftentimes that risk is some part of our identity, some part of ourselves that we think we are that we would have to give up.

Learning to receive is tricky in some ways. We have to be receptive and willing to look at what we’re seeing show up in our lives. If the results are not what they want them to be, we have to be willing to ask ourselves, “Is it just that I’m not willing to receive this?” You might think you’re working toward it but in some way be unconsciously blocking yourself.

Oracle cards don’t have that same structure. You can use them in various layouts or simply to ask what message would like to be delivered today.

You can mix and shuffle the cards however you want. Or spread them out and pick one that you feel drawn to. Trust that the card you pull is right for you today.

Okay, interesting! Three cards fell out.

I notice that every March or April, I engage in some kind of big undertaking. Some of the most powerful, life-changing programs I’ve ever taken have been in March or April. Some of the major life changes I’ve made have also happened in the March/April timeframe.

I found that interesting. I notice I get introspective and reflective around my birthday in July. I feel a momentum going into the holidays and always have a sense of wanting to finish the year strong.

I’m not a big fan of the hustle. I’ve done it plenty in my life, and to a certain degree, it works. What I’m referring to is aggressively, forcefully going after what I want. I have an assertive personality, so it’s easy for me to lean toward what I want in an active way. In fact, it’s taken me a lot of growth work to be able to relax and let go of the “I want that, let me go get it” attitude.