Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 561 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Welcome if you’re new and welcome back if you’ve been hanging out with me for a while. Im super glad we get to hang out a couple times a week.
I’m certain not all of you noticed but I know some of you did, so I have to apologize for the last episode publishing a few hours late. It was totally on me. I usually batch and publish all episodes before I go out of town but I didn’t get Mondays out before we left thinking oh I will do it while we are traveling, well we were busy busy and by the time I was ready to publish it was at the airport and there was no place quiet enough for me to record so I had to record when we got home which was one thirty in the morning. BUT I got it done! However, I published for it to go out the next day like I always do, not thinking about it already being Monday even though by then it was 3 am on Monday. So I got a text early from a friend who is a loyal listener telling me I was in big trouble. I knew immediately that the episode hadn’t published. You may ask yourself “how did you know immediately what that text meant?” Well I will tell you. Because as I was going to sleep at 3am after recording and publishing, I was so ready to go to sleep but my intuition, my gut tried to get me to get out of bed and check the date once more, to which I ignored that little voice and just went to sleep. So when I got that text when I woke up the next day, I immediately knew.
That is what I get for ignoring my intuition. The crazy thing is, I’m reading a book right now on our intuition. It’s all about how NOT to ignore your intuition and how often times our subconscious will try to get through to our conscious brain that something is off but our conscious brain just waves it off. Only to later find out, oh man I knew that was gonna happen. I should have listened to that little voice. So my apologies.
Have you ever done that? Ignored the little voice in your head telling you to do or not do something and later realized you definitely should have listened? What I’m finding in this book I’m reading is that our subconscious mind sees WAY more than our conscious mind. It takes in way more information that we are not even aware of. So when I clicked the wrong date to publish, my subconscious mind saw it, but my conscious mind didn’t. This is why it’s crucial we always listen to our subconscious mind when it’s telling us something, it has more information than you even realize. I love knowing that. It will make me much more apt to pay attention k owing that it knows something I don’t know just yet. It’s a good thing for us all to keep in mind.
So we were in California this last week for a graduation which was so fun. I really enjoyed California this time. The last time we went it was kind of sad. There were homeless people everywhere, even in the nicest places and it just was sad to see. We didn’t see that this time so I’m hoping it’s because they got them help. But as we were leaving we had to take highway 101 to get to the LA airport. Well that just happened to be during the immigration protests where they were rioting on 101. So I knew we were going to be heading that direction so I was keeping an eye on X the last day or so to see if we needed to change our route or anything. Turns out we made it to the airport before they blocked interstate 101 thankfully. But I noticed I was paying attention to X more than I had been. Once you start, it can be very addictive, so for that day and even the next few days I could tell I was on X or thinking about being on it. Definitely more than normal. Now, I at the same time have had this underlying anxiety that I couldn’t explain. We’ve been off our normal schedule due to travel, but even still, I don’t usually have anxiety like this and there really isn’t reason for me to have anxiety. No one is sick, no pressing design jobs that are late, so it’s definitely something else that I could t put my finger on. Well, as I always do when we are home, I get up in the morning and I did my morning meditation. During that meditation, out of nowhere, that little voice got through and said “it’s X”. That’s what’s causing your anxiety”. And then my mind went right back to meditating. But my conscious mind when we were done was horrified. I realized I was causing my own underlying anxiety and over what? Things I have no control over and things I have no reason to be focused on. SO like the protests in LA. I don’t have any control of that. Or, not sure if you’ve paid attention to this, but The whole Blake Lively, justin Baldoni issue where the evidence so far really seems like she did him so wrong. Why do I care about that? It’s all distraction. It’s distraction that had my stomach tied up in knots and was keeping me want to be glued to my phone. But once I got back home and got back into my routine with my meditation and exercise and being present where I am, I realized how easy it is to drive your own self crazy with distractions. It’s a constant push and pull for me but the happiest, most peaceful I feel is when I am paying no attention to things I don’t control and being present for what is in front of me. While we were traveling we were so busy with family and getting to be in nature I had no anxiety, so I realized that I was causing my own anxiety by having my attention on things designed to keep us anxious and addicted. But it doesn’t have to control me, I control it. My meditation seemed to wake me completely up from the fog I had been in. And it’s hard, I know it is. I even realized that my book seemed less interesting than what was happening on X so it was hard for me to focus on my book. I likened it for myself to having the choice of a big healthy fresh organic salad or a warm chocolate brownie with caramel ice cream. One is going to nourish you and keep you full and the other is going to make it very difficult to go back to eating salad. If you are disciplined you can eat the whole salad and maybe one bite of the brownie but if you aren’t disciplined, you have to do away with the brownie all together. I have put myself on a X detox. I can feel my anxiety melting away. I can feel the presence of the moment with Sonny and charlie or noticing my ticking clock and the way the trees sway with the wind. Noticing the subtle nudge of my own intuition. I don’t see any of that when my head is in my phone. And I would venture to say you’re not much different. Only Maybe your distraction is instagram or work or alcohol. Whatever it is that has power over you, when you realize you’re allowing that power, you also realize you can take it back. It’s not that you’ve failed if you’re constantly having to work at it, it’s that you’re human. And we are all a work in progress that will never end until we die. Our job is to be the best that we can be and that’s gonna include having to overcome distraction again and again. Each time you overcome it, you get a little stronger. But in order to overcome it, you have to be aware of it, which usually involves your intuition, which you’re able to hear when you’re not distracted.
My point of this episode is this. We all have an inner guidance system that is very powerful and knows what is best for us but it’s almost impossible to hear if you’re distracted.
