002. Fuck The Levels (on being kind of over the old way of personal development)
I was walking down Bellwoods Avenue, right next to Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, on the phone with my best friend on a gloomy, but glow-y night after the rain just 2 months ago.
Her and I had been butting heads as of late, as she's gone FULL ON in her belief in personal development and coaching just as I'm starting to see my way out (at least in the "old way" that it's been done).
The good thing about this particular best friend is that she's able to hold space for absolutely anything and knows that anything anyone says is not a reflection of herself, so I took this as an opportunity to absolutely blast it.
For the sake of visualizing this next part, imagine you're a mother and someone has just done something to hurt your child and the level of animalistic, primal rage that would fill your body. That's the level I was at as I began to go off.
"I'm fucking SICK of personal development", I said, as I annunciated every single vowel and consonant with my jaw half clenched.
"How many FUCKING LEVELS do we have to get to so we can finally be FUCKING happy?"
"I'm sick of spending my life fucking healing. How much more can we fucking heal and 'EXPANDDDD'? I'm fucking DONE".
And right then and there, my tear ducts filled and tears spilled out all down my cheeks.
The truth was, I don't actually hate personal development. In fact, I love it. I've loved it since I was a pre-teen reading self-help books on my own in the corner of Chapters Indigo.
Doing "the work" has helped me to heal so many parts of myself, enrich friendships & relationships and is the reason I am the version of myself that I deeply love and am proud of today.
And? I'm done with making healing my hobby.
And, while I'm a believer in taking radical responsibility for your life, I'm done with carrying all of the weight of it.
There are many spiritual / personal development teachings that are empowering, and can also come with a lot of harm depending on what state you're in.
One of them (and it's one that I have said, and actually do still believe in to an extent), is that we create our reality with the thoughts, beliefs and stories we tell ourselves.
But, this thinking also began to fuck me up.
Over the past year, there were many days where I woke up feeling a lack of purpose and sense of direction. There would be days where I would all of a sudden feel very depressed, like intrusive suicidal thoughts out of nowhere (looking into PMDD for this).
And, having all of the personal development world reflect back that "you create your reality" when you are experiencing something as terrifying as intrusive suicidal thoughts is seriously fucked up.
Like, already having those kind of thoughts is scary enough (especially as a big zesty life-lover like me) and then having to carry the weight of the thought that I might have actually created that reality? LOL, like fuck that.
(For the record, I haven't experienced intrusive thoughts for a while like I did during my depression, but fragments of them pop up from time to time)
I'm not saying the answer is to put blame on others or society either. I actually don't know what the true answer is here, but I do believe, in those moments, we need to step AWAY from any spiritual / personal development-related thinking until we're a bit more above baseline and out of the downward spiral.
Not to mention, I'm DONE with my planning my social life around healing. I love breathwork, sound baths and women's circles, but you know what else I love?
Going out for dinner,
Chatting to strangers in coffee shops,
Sharing a bottle of wine with friends,
Thrift shopping and big box shopping,
Making music with friends,
And, going to raves.
I'm just DONE with making healing a fucking hobby (LOL God, can you tell I've been dying to get this out?!)
I'm also not saying I'm right, or what I'm saying here "is the way" – but, it's right for me and where I'm at right now.
The past few years, while filled with many joyous moments, have felt heavy, and eventually, after feeling somewhat in the same state for a long time, I had to practice what I preach to take some opposite action to create a new reality for myself.
And, over the past couple of months, my gut has been saying to step way from it all.
Over the past 2 months:
- I haven't pulled an oracle card
- I haven't journaled
- I haven't done a morning routine
- I haven't done any mushroom / psychedelic journeys (with love to them, they are a potent healing medicine and have a time + place, but I can see how I was making this a hobby rather than a medicine to learn from and integrate into my life)
And, I haven't felt as happy, calm and "aligned" as I do right now in a long ass time.
I remember looking at my twin sister's life who has never gone to therapy or opened a personal development book in her life, and taking note of how happy she was. I'm not saying I want to do life in the way that she does (we are VERY different and we know it and own it lol); I know our soul's are here to fulfill different missions in this life time. But, I'm ready to relax into my life a bit more now.
I think personal development is great, but, it's a tool – not a hobby, or a way to live all the time. It's something we can tap into when we need it.
More than oracle cards and journaling, here are the things that have been helping me to feel centred, happy and aligned as of late:
- Listening to myself and what *I* need
- Getting honest about what I need to feel safe and stable (i.e. signing a lease and knowing where I'm going to live for the upcoming year, part-time work where I don't have to think about generating my own income
- Creating more space + protecting my energy (this is also why I unfollowed nearly everyone on social media. Cosmo Mag coming soon on this, but, in short, I love you all and I love seeing what everyone is up to, and the truth is – it fucks me up. I compare myself and have to do A LOT of mindset work to save me from falling into a downward spiral. It was easier to just unfollow everyone, and intentionally search their accounts if I want to see their content)
- Taking somewhat of a more practical approach to life (instead of striving for "manifesting" $50k months, creating a logical plan to generate the amount I need to cover my bills, expenses and "fun money")
Some people in the mindset / manifestation world might poke holes in all of this, chalking up my recent realizations to being in "victimhood", and, to that, I say, poke away.
I'll fully own there might be some victimhood hanging out in my beliefs right now AND I'M OKAY WITH IT.
I'm not here to be a mindset superstar anymore.
I'm not here to be a fully healed version of myself.
I'm here to live my life
To learn
To grow
To experience
To have FUN (and "heal / grow / expand" through really fucking fun all women's dance parties!)
To make out with my Uber driver when I so desire (lol)
And, to accept the version of who I am every step of the way.
And, my wish is that gives you a permission slip to live your life however the fuck you want, too.