Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 440 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! Thank you for being here and for sharing and also for giving me a five star review if it feels right. I love that we get to be together twice a week even if it is for just 10 minutes a time! Thank you!
Ok, I have mentioned my friend Leena to you guys, she is a new friend I have made in the last year. I met her at the gym and we are similar in a lot of ways and not similar in a lot of ways. But we both enjoy a challenge and we enjoy working out. So I was telling Kevin my trainer one day about our swimming the day before and how we swam hard and for an hour and 20 min or something crazy considering I had worked out with weights prior to that. Kevin proceeds to say “you have found your spirit animal gym friend”. And I laughed and said you’re right! Which of course begged the question of what spirit animal Kevin thinks we are. He knows I want him to say something like a Lion because they are fierce and also my favorite animal or something cool like that but instead he says “nope you guys are flamingos!” Flamingo?!? What in the world???? Oh my goodness no way. So we had a good laugh about it and when Leena came by to say hi I laughingly told her about our insulting spirit animal flamingo. To which she said I proudly wear my flamingo badge. I loved that. Ok flamingo it is. About a week later I’m going to furniture market for a long weekend and at furniture market there is a company that always gives really cool stuffed animals and it’s always a big hit, everyone wants on.
The last year I was there it was a lion which I of course was obsessed with. You know what they are because it doesn’t take long at market to start seeing people carrying around the stuffed animal of the market, they are easy to spot. So I’m walking. Along and I see a woman and she is carrying two beautiful pink flamingos and I think huh that’s cool and then I see a few other women with pink flamingos and I’m like oh my goodness! The stuffy this year is a pink flamingo. Imagine that. Now. This is not a situation where they are just handing the flamingos out to whoever. They kind of want you to take the tour and be a buyer of their product of course.
So our first attempt to get into their showroom didn’t happen because our rep wasn’t available and I noticed I was worried that I was r going to get a flamingo. I wanted two one for me and one for Leena. It would be so funny to be able to give her one too. But now I worried that wasn’t going to happen. But I noticed that and I said you know what? Forcing things never works out well and if it does, you don’t usually feel good about it. So I thought you know what? I’m going to let it go and leave it to the universe. If I’m supposed to go home with two flamingos I will. And I honestly never gave it another thought until the next day our friends sent a text and said hi! We are having lunch in the showroom and we have our flamingos! Come join us. SO we head up and when we checked in we told them our friends were already here and so they walked us in to meet our friends where we had a yummy heathy lunch and when I went to get a flamingo there was a sign that said two flamingos per person lol. Oh man. They never have said that before. When I asked how it came about that they chose flamingos the guy said we aren’t really sure, they don’t usually do birds but this year they did. My point in telling that story is this. I knew that I could manage to get a flamingo, I could fret, I could finagle, I could stress or I could just let it go and let the Universe work the magic that it always will when you allow it to. And that’s what I did. And it felt so right and satisfying the way it played out.
Because I was raised in a very strict religion that painted God as angry and jealous and punishing, I never really understood why people felt good about saying “let go and let God” but now I understand. We can force our way through life, and sure that works in a way but it makes life difficult and stressful. But when you put an attention to something you desire and you just allow it to happen as it will. What’s meant for you will always be yours, you can do it the hard way by forcing and efforting if you want but having done that for a very long time I can attest to the satisfaction of just allowing.
I talked in an earlier episode about having quite a bit of anxiety about an expensive product I was selecting for a client and not feeling right about the specific brand we were considering. I decided to go with my gut and just know that the right product was out there and would you know that in the meantime of my telling the vendor we were going to go a different direction a new vendor came to me by way of a client that I had decided to help even though I didn’t really have the time. And do you know the product turned out to be exactly what we wanted at half the cost. Letting go and allowing used to be in my mind the lazy way out. “You have to be efforting and making things happen” that’s what my mind always used to tell me, thats what society will have you believe every time. No pain no gain right? “If you’re not bleeding, you’re not trying”. Any of those sound familiar?
We go through life being taught that you have to exert yourself. You have to push your way into first. But have you ever noticed that the people who seemingly always come out on top usually make it look easy? They don’t seem to be trying to force anything, it almost seems magical in a way? That’s the power of allowing… it’s contrary to everything we’ve been taught but it’s the key to everything we want. If you’re a religious person let go and let God makes sense if you’re not religious, then just knowing in your heart that what is meant for you will be, just know that allowing things to come to you is way more effective than forcing them.
My challenge to you today is if there’s something you’ve been wanting, something you know in your heart is meant for you, let go of the need to force it and maybe even put your focus on something else. You can do what I do and just give it to the Universe, if it’s meant for you, there’s nothing that can stop it, just know in your heart it will work out and then let it go. It’s scary, I know but often the key to everything you want is hidden in your ability to learn to let go. Share this with 3 people who are working really hard to make things happen. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
