#55: Waking Up Inside Your Own life

This tribe of folks (now family) are from Europe, the Caribbean, United States, Australia, and the Middle East. Not beginners. Not “trying to figure ourselves out” people. Highly capable, highly educated, high-responsibility, and highly intentional.

Every single one of us went through the same shift: waking up (further) inside our own lives. That’s the point of this newsletter.

What “Waking Up Inside Your Own Life" Means

Most people think they’re living their life. What’s actually happening is circumstances are living them.

Your phone lights up and that decides how you feel. An email lands and that decides whether you get out of bed calm or in panic. A client wants something and that decides what happens to your next three hours. A message comes in with tension and that tension immediately becomes your mood.

That is how most people are operating, all day, every day. They aren’t creating. They’re reacting. Their nervous system is on call to whatever hits them next. And the scary part is they call that normal. This is a core problem in society right now. People are not running their life. Circumstances are.

Waking Up Is When That Breaks

Waking up is the moment you see it clearly: “My entire day has been dictated by what shows up, instead of by what I have decided this day is for.” It’s the moment you realize you’ve let outside urgency tell you who you are, how valuable you are, how safe you are, how fast you have to move, how much you’re allowed to rest, and when you’re allowed to feel okay. It’s the moment you admit, “I am not actually choosing. I am constantly answering.” That level of honesty is uncomfortable at first. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The Shift

By the end of the year everyone in that circle understood one thing: If you are not awake and intentional your circumstances will drive your life. If you are awake and intentional you create your circumstances. That’s the line. Said even simpler:

Unconscious life = “The situation dictates me.”
Conscious life = “I dictate the situation.”

Unconscious life: You wake up, check your phone, read a message, and immediately your body spikes. You go straight into response mode before you’ve even taken a breath. Your entire day is now anchored to someone else’s urgency.

Conscious life: You wake up and decide, “Here’s what I am doing with my time, energy, attention, and body today. Here’s how I’m going to feel in my own space. Here’s what matters. The world can wait a minute.” That is not “time management.” That is identity.

Unconscious life: “I have to answer this right now or something bad will happen.”
Conscious life: “I am not controlled by outside noise. I'll move on my timing, from my center, my source."

Unconscious life: “This is just what my job requires. This is just what this market demands. This is just how it is right now.”
Conscious life: “No. This is what I’ve been allowing. I can alter this structure. I can alter how I engage. I can alter where I put myself. I can alter who gets instant access to me.”

One is compulsion. One is authorship. Pick wisely.

What Changed

After a year of learning and fellowship together, these folks live differently. It's actually beautiful to witness as the one who brought us all together. That’s the simplest way to say it.

We don't allow waking up straight into panic. We don't let the first message on the phone decide tone of the whole day (actually we mental diet and just don't look). We don't give an automatic “yes” to everything that reaches us. We have given ourselves permission to slow the moment down before we move. And probably the biggest one: we've consciously stopped letting other people’s urgency live in our body.

From the outside, nothing dramatic “blew up.” Same careers, same families, same responsibilities. But the way they we move through it is totally different. It's cleaner, calmer, more chosen. It's now subconcious patterning to protect self to Try Life On better.

Questions To Ask Yourself

How much of your day is you creating your life and how much of your day is you reacting to what shows up? When you wake up are you setting the tone for your world or are you letting a notification set the tone for you? Do you move on your own timing or are you jump-starting your body every morning in response to somebody else’s demand? Are you deciding who you are right now or are you letting the situation tell you who you are?

If your answer is “I’ll get to myself later once things calm down”, take a step back and notice how long you’ve been saying that. Six months. Two years. Ten years. How long?

“Later” is how circumstances keep control of you. “Now” is how you take it back. You have way more power than you think. It's just that circumstances aren't allowing you to see it. I wrote this newsletter in hopes you will.

Maurice