Hi guys! Welcome to episode 371 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast. I hope you guys know you are not alone out there if you feel like life is heavy. But it doesn’t have to few that way all the time, you really are supposed to feel good and be enjoying life. Keep hanging out here and we will figure it out together. I promise.
I’m an interior designer by trade. I was working on a project recently and it was going a little slower than we wanted and the client lived in the house we we were working on so she was watching every step we took of course as I would be too. But sometimes projects as they develop have unique aspects that maybe don’t look amazing on their own but in the big picture it’s going to be spectacular. So she was a nervous Nancy until we were finished and it all came together and she said oh my goodness I wouldn’t change one thing but as we had been going along she questioned choices because they didn’t all go in at one time which meant you had to keep the big picture in mind, it just wasn’t possible for that project to get done in a week it was too big and their were issues as we worked, tile came in broken, concrete had to be jackhammered further down then we thought, shower glass came in scratched, lots of little things out of our control that we had to deal with and is just part of the project. So individually the pieces weren’t blowing her mind but when it was all put together it really was a masterpiece.
Our lives are like that though too. There are times when we have to do things we don’t love and there are times when everything is going smoothly and there are aspects of our life we don’t like if we just look at it individually but when you step back and you think wow if that mistake hadn’t been made, then this awesome thing would never have happened. There’s always a big picture. Sometimes we get so bogged down in the minutia that we underestimate the power of the big picture.
We judge ourselves or our life by one moment in time or one thing that happened or maybe one aspect of ourselves we don’t like when that’s just one little ingredient to the overall big picture. So yeah we have that thing that ok we don’t love on it’s own but when it’s added to everything else it’s what makes things really work.
It’s like taking a piece of cake and instead of waiting until the cake is done you try each ingredient and judge the end product on the way each individual ingredient tastes so you wouldn’t eat the raw egg and say well that cake isn’t going to taste good because that’s gross or you try a taste of the vanilla that you add and by itself it doesn’t taste good but wow when you get the flavor it adds in the end product it wouldn’t be the same without it. That’s how we have to look at our life. There’s some ingredients that are so yummy and then there’s some that aren’t great but in the overall big picture it makes things work.
In that project I was talking about earlier we had picked out this beautiful tile, it was just so gorgeous and we were so excited until the call came in that the tile company made a mistake and they do not have enough stock so we have to pick a new one. We were really bummed. But that forced us back to the drawing board and we found this new tile that just came out that both of us loved even more. It is to this day one of my favorite parts of that project. Life happens and we adapt.
Each little aspect of our life is like an ingredient to the big picture. We can’t judge ourselves from one thing or doom our life because one mistake or one perceived failure.
It’s all part of your big picture so don’t waste time regretting or judging or dramatizing because those things just keep you stuck. That original tile we loved. It was on backorder for the next year, we could have waited. But sometimes those back orders keep being on backorder. Experience has taught me that. We had a timeline and waiting didn’t make sense for us. We could still be waiting who knows. But we adapted and moved on with what I think was an even more perfect tile and we never once regretted the first tile being out of stock once we allowed ourselves to move on. That was part of the project that wasn’t fun but made the overall project a masterpiece.
There’s a lot of ingredients in each of our lives. Some individually are great and some individually aren’t so great. But dwelling on or regretting or begrudging just keeps us stuck in a perpetual hold. But overall when we step back we realize it’s all part of it and it’s what makes us who we are. Flaws and all.
Sometimes we’re tempted to hang onto our past story. It’s like an invisible force holding us back from living fully. That thing you can’t let go of that’s holding you back, sometimes when you let it go it frees up so much space in your life for endless possibilities. I picture the difference between running with a 20 lb weight vs without it. Feel how freeing that is and how much more power you have because of it. That’s why athletes train with added weight because it makes it seem like anything’s possible when that weight is gone. Is there something you’re hanging onto?
Or maybe sometimes we throw away the ingredients all together because we judged it too early like if we tried the cake batter when we just had eggs flour and water that would taste terrible but it’s not done. You’re not done. If you’re still living you’re not done. There’s more ingredients to add. Don’t judge where you’re going to end up by where you are right now. Are you in the middle of a season right now and beating yourself up for where you are? You’re not done. Being open to possibility gets you to a place you want to go that you may not know you wanted to get to. That’s a quote from a book I’m reading by Rick Rubin called “The Creative Act, a way of being.”
If you keep moving forward without regret, without dramatizing, without continuing to drudge up the past story it’s going to just get better and better. The more you let go of judging your life and yourself and others too, the better you’re going to feel. The better you feel the better life is. The better life is the easier it gets to feel good.
My challenge to you today is to embrace that the ingredients in your life aren’t ultimately good or bad..they may seem so on an individual basis but when looked at as a whole they’ve made you who you are today, but who you are going to be in the future is made up of the ingredients you add from this day forward. Don’t judge where you’re going to end up by where you are right now because you’re not done. Share this with 3 people who are not done…I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
