Forcing Things Means They’ll Pop Loose

We get to design our life.

We choose far more often than not what our life is like and how we proceed with our moments, days, and years. It’s good to know this sooner than later.

Finding a good fit.

I’ve been thinking about how my life has felt since I started doing aerials (pole sport, the aerial hoop, silks) going on two years ago.

See, I was an un-athletic, bookwormy kid. I did try different sports over the years, such as aerobics in the 80s, and I even got a blue belt in tae kwon do in college.

​I began ballet as an adult, then more recently was talked into trying an aerials class.

To my complete surprise, I liked it.

A lot.

And I’m still excited about it!

I’m getting strong as well as brave.

I’m lifting my own body weight, I can do pull-ups, I can hang by an elbow or a knee, I can twist myself upside down and hold on with a knee and a couple of fingers.

And I’m doing upside-down things and in-the-air things, which are both so far out of my comfort zone that I still astonished.

But best of all, I feel like a kid playing (if I’d been this brave as a kid, that is)!

The cool thing is, it all just fell into place.

After the types of exercise I’ve tried, I’m now, at my age (59 as I write this) more fit than I’ve ever been. That’s just crazytown!

Prior to doing aerials, I’d taken time off from dance classes and had been making myself exercise and go to the gym and so forth. I enjoyed it in a way, but basically, I often felt I “should” exercise.

You know the story.

Like being in love.

Now that I have a taste of things “just falling into place,” I want more—I want my whole life to be like this.

It’s like being in love—everything’s aligned, everything falls into place, angels sing, the whole thing.

Seriously.

So rather than following a “should” path, what if we listen for what feels right for us? For what’s fun? Challenging, sure!

Also fun, fulfilling, enriching, exciting… even when it’s hard work.

But…

Early on we get messages that conflict with our intuition, but we feel obliged to go along with them anyway. Rules, expectations. and systems that start right at home with our families (who absorbed them from their families).

And we have rules, expectations, and systems in school (from pre-school to college!), on the playground, at work, in relationships, at church, in our communities, in our state and country.

We learn the systems and go along with them.

This isn’t inherently bad.

For example, one day when you’re driving, take note of how smoothly traffic is moving along. In spite of bad drivers, it’s pretty impressive how it all works.

We have systems that work well.

And we have some systems that don’t work well.

Which we know.

Training ourselves to override our intuition is one of those places where our system isn’t so great.

We have this inner wisdom which is pretty much infallible—our intuition always knows. Yet because life is a big ol’ experiment and we’re learning as we go, we don’t always listen.

Still, though, at some point it’s a good idea to tune in to our intuition.

Otherwise we blow.

As in, we can’t stand it any longer that we’re so off-track from our intuition. Call it a midlife crisis, an identity crisis, a nervous breakdown, a come-to-Jesus, an epiphany, a dark night of the soul, existential angst,…

It’s just that it feels so much better to flow through life than to butt heads with it.

So imagine you’re flowing along like water…

You get to a boulder, and instead of bulldozing your way into it (reacting rather than responding), you flow around it. If it hadn’t been there, you’d flow straight ahead, so it’s not as though you ignore obstructions. You simply go with the flow.

I remember being told that I can’t “just go with the flow” in life, and that life doesn’t “just fall into place.”

I remember being told that “it doesn’t work that way” and that “you have to pay your dues.”

Well I’m bucking that system.

I want my life to fall into place.

I want it to flow like a stream.

I want to be aligned with my intuition.

I might have thought otherwise in the past, but I’ve gotten to where I no longer think this is too much to expect.

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