It constantly amazes me how little I truly know. The older I get, the more my world expands. And the more my world expands, the more possibilities open up. And these possibilities help me realize that my world and my “knowing” is such a small piece of this vast, infinite universe.

For most of my life, these thoughts and realizations would have been extremely unsettling for me. For most of my life, I’ve wanted to be in complete control. I’ve wanted to know how something would work out and how I would get there and how it would all end up and how everything would happen well before it happened just so I could make sure that everything would be okay when it did eventually happen. And quite honestly, this trying to control each aspect of my life has been absolutely exhausting (and completely futile, as it turns out).

I could go into why I have felt the need to attempt this high level of control throughout my life, and I could share how doing so has made me feel more secure while living a life where the foundation didn’t always feel super solid. I could explain everything that happened in my childhood and early adulthood that led me to living this way and thinking this way and behaving this way and controlling myself and my life this way. And it would all make perfect sense to you (and also to me). Everything would line up, and we could all agree that this was a logical way to go through life for so many years.

Except, I would so much rather focus on where I am today – right here in this exact moment. I would so much rather give my energy to all that I have learned and become and expanded into. I would so much rather share from this space of possibility and faith-filled uncertainty than go into the past and replay what has become a broken record of doing something one way that didn’t particularly feel good but I continued to do simply because it was the way that it was always done. 

Yes. It feels so much better to write, here in this moment, from a space of possibility and unknowing. And to admit that I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen at any moment in the future. None at all. Each morning when I wake up, I have an outline of how I think the day will transpire, and each day I’m so amused that it never ever went that way at all. Sometimes good things happen that I hadn’t accounted for. And sometimes sad things happen that break my heart. Either way, I didn’t know that they were about to happen. And either way, there is nothing that I could have done to control the outcome of them – to prevent them from happening (in the case of things that were sad) or speed up or look forward to them happening (in the case of things that were happy).

And so, given this space of complete unknowing that I’ve been living in and this space of realizing how little control I have on what happens externally in my life, I have been taking a new approach that consists of two things:

1. I have given myself permission to lighten up and to relax and to simply be part of this world without trying to control it.
2. And I have been putting a lot more faith in remembering that I live in a loving universe and that everything that happens is for my highest good.

These two shifts have completely changed my life. In knowing that I don’t know what will happen and that I have absolutely no control over what will happen, I no longer have to try to control my world and the world around me with such tight fists. I no longer have to push myself so hard to work and create and do absolutely everything in order for anything to get done.

I no longer have to delude myself into believing that I know things that I can’t possibly know simply because I think I will feel better knowing them. I can accept that I know very, very little. And in doing so, I can relax into and embrace a universal knowing that is filled with faith and love and absolutely everything that I will ever need to experience the life that I have longed for.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I am completely passive in my life. It doesn’t mean that I just lie around all day and wait for the universe to bring me whatever I am asking for. It means that the way I go about living has changed. I am now consciously focusing on how I feel about what I’m doing. If it feels like a struggle, I shift direction. I take a break. I stop and ask myself why. I reflect. I go deeper within and really look to see why I am doing something – is the action coming from my ego (because I think I have to or need to) or my soul (because it’s for my highest good).

I have made relief a huge part of my day-to-day experience. If I feel relieved, I know I’m living from my soul. If I feel tight and constricted and stressed, I know that it’s a good time to take some deep breaths and stop pushing against my soul’s desires and start relaxing into them.

This year has been filled with so many shifts for me – many of which I am still processing and sifting through. But I have to say that relaxing into my life rather than trying to control it resonates so deeply for me. I don’t have to know what’s ahead. I can’t possibly know what’s ahead. All I truly can know is that I live in a universe that’s filled with love. And knowing that feels like enough for me in this moment. It feels like a huge exhale that’s filled with a whole lot of relief.

We don’t have to have it all figured out. We don’t have to know it all. In fact, we can’t possibly know it all, even if we wanted to more than anything. But we can embody faith. We can embody truth. We can embody a deeper knowing that goes beyond our rational thoughts and our egos and our minds and our physical experience. We can trade in our need for control and replace it with our want to feel good. And we can shift into this open, loved-up space whenever we choose to. I love that so much. It’s such an open-hearted, soul-filled way to walk through life, which is what I wish for each of us.

Hugs,