How Good Can It Get?

Sent by Lauren Jane Heller    |    June 24, 2022

Ever wonder how other people create the lives they love? Is it by following their hearts? Is it because they got lucky and someone handed them an amazing opportunity? Is it because they started off rich? They had connections? They had some magical recipe or ingredients that most of us don’t know about?

For many years — specifically, when I was in mired in a story about what it meant to be the breadwinner and a responsible mother and human — I told myself that things would eventually fall into place and everything would be fun and easy again. While there were certainly moments of joy and play and connection, there was also a lot of frustration, of feeling limited and wondering “When will this phase be over? When will the stress be behind me?”

And so, I kept working hard, earning money, believing that if I focused enough, if I proved myself, life would become easier and more joyful. I’d feel free.

How wrong I was.

I believed that by doing things I didn’t particularly enjoy, I would eventually find my way to spending my time doing things I love. Can you see the contradiction here? Rather than recognizing that my life is happening right now, in this moment, and that how I’m relating to my work and relationships RIGHT NOW is the key, I believed that things would be different in the future. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t about the things, the externalities, it was about how I was relating to life and the world around me!

Today, I am bubbling over with glee.

This past week, I spent a beautiful 5-day mini vacation with people I love. Of course, not everything went exactly the way I could have wished, but even the trickier moments helped me to learn more about myself and the contexts I create. I took myself for a massage to my favourite spa. I brought home some beautiful bowls and ceremonial rattles I made at my pottery class (which is one of my favourite ways to play!). I went to yoga. I ran a Shine+Connect session at lunchtime yesterday and felt super inspired by the women I got to meet and support. I had a coaching call with a client who made a major shift in the session and got me all jazzed up. In short, I feel gleeful because I’ve been doing the things that feel good.

This past year has been a journey of recognizing my own contexts. When I lived in the context of “I work hard to be successful”, I worked really hard, felt rather drained and achieved success but largely at my own expense.

When I shifted from that context to “I’m going to build a business I love that incorporates all of my favourite things life has to offer,” I was able to build a business that brings me immense joy and satisfaction, and through which I get to have incredibly deep conversations, learn every day, go on epic adventures and help other people to transform their lives and communities.

I have learned that the more joyful I am, the more space I create in my life, the clearer I am about what I want, then the more able I am to create that very context. While 30-year-old LJ believed that happiness and success would come if I kept pushing and proving myself, 39-year-old LJ knows that I already am happiness and success: I just had to claim and BE those things.

So if you’re still waiting for life to get better, to be less stressful, to feel more aligned, please stop and do this one thing: get clear on the context you are currently living in that feels too small or stressful or misaligned. Then think about the context you want to live in and make it even bigger.

I choose to live the most freaking extraordinary life. I choose to build an incredible business that will support other humans to be at their best, to connect with themselves and the world. I choose to be adventure and play and joy and possibility. I choose to have a fantastic and mind-blowing relationship with my husband, to be a fierce lioness mother for my daughters: to be safety and play and wisdom for and with them.

I have no idea what the road will look like, when I will hit obstacles or milestones, or how good things will get, but from this context, I know that it’s going to be an unbelievable journey. Of course, I’m human, and will sometimes slip back into a past context, but that’s okay — I know what it feels like to be aligned!

I hope that you are able to notice your context today and tomorrow and choose something that feels better, freer, and a whole lot yummier.

And if you want to better understand your context, reach out and we can see where you’re living.

Love always,

LJ

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