It’s been seven weeks since I quit my full time job for my mental, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. A post by Marie Forleo yesterday read, “Life gives to the givers.” It made me feel guilty for taking this sabbatical for me to regulate and selfish for wanting to give from a place where I feel fulfilled.

At the same time, I know that this was for a reset. It’s for helping me do life differently and achieve a dream: Build a community of heart-centered, self aware, connected, and empowered women who uplift and support one another to live life more intentionally and authentically.

Today, the Chani app says, “Feelings of malaise can steer you toward an inspired course correction. The mark you make on the world is a moving target, so savor the magical diversions, digressions, and detours along the way…” I’m doing my best to embrace this odd time I’m in, despite the strange highs and lows I’ve experienced recently, and to tune into the little things more, like the ridges of this leaf on my walk the other day.

I also love this: “Once you ditch the user’s manual, your capacity for enchantment will grow.” That hit me, because I always search for the formula or rules that I can follow or break. I’m attempting, messily, to write my own rules and allow more magic to flow in my day.

There are things I’m recognizing strongly about who I have been up until this point, habits or beliefs I have, and ways I function that may create roadblocks to showing up fully for my dream and writing my own rules:

I’m motivated by idealistic outcomes (that I often conjure in my own imagination and then am disappointed by the reality).
When things fall outside my control, I get irritable and try hard to understand why/how and then reach for anything or anyone that provides a sense of order.
I need some validation for my efforts or creations, otherwise, I feel lost at sea.
I believe I’m meant to make a difference/an impact in some way, like leave something special behind after I die, so if not children/lineage, then what?
I’m such an emotional being that sometimes I ignore or don’t see logic when its right in front of my face.
Success looks like a packed schedule, gobs of money coming in, people touched or affected, and is loud and proud.
Love and connection are hard work, require sacrifice, need to always be reciprocal, and often involve noise, chaos, or performing a certain role(s).

#6 and #7 are old beliefs I’m outgrowing and are dying the hardest. It’s taking me a sec to wrap my head around success and love/connection looking any different than what I’m used to.

So what if these are my new rules:

Embrace detachment to outcomes and let what is, be what is.
Allow myself to go with the flow and trust in my own stability.
Validate myself, and if I need it from an external source, just ask!
Lean harder into the knowledge that simply being here, existing and having relationships IS impactful. It doesn’t have to be major!
Talk with people who help me see logic, kindly, when my emotions might be clouding me.
Try to reframe success as simple, quiet, and subtle. More like waking to another day, alive, and smiling at the sun.
See love and connection as simply being and allowing all others to be (without harm, of course).

And then I think about my dream again and am filled with the biggest YES! and… I want to support others’ lives in ways that provide freedom and flexibility to go with my flow, which definitely doesn’t fit inside our capitalistic patriarchy.

But this is it. I’m here. Attempting to trust the living fuck out of it. Because this sabbatical is healing me and opening space to continue receiving abundance in all its forms.

Your turn. What’s blocking you? What new rules can you write about how you show up in the world?

Writing Our Own Rules