This starts as permission to change your mind.

To pivot. Evolve. Unfold. Expand. Go deeper. 

Permission to climb the spiral staircase to the next level, the next floor, or maybe to go back the way you came.

To say, “I thought I wanted to keep climbing, but doing so has shown me that I was happiest, most content, calmest, at my most ease-filled and peaceful ages ago…so now I will descend.”

(And of course, descending is only a radical move because the world tells us that our Purpose in Life is to ascend forever. As quickly as we can. Never letting them see us sweat. And also, “can you get me a little more tea on your way by?”)

Here’s where I remind you that what can easily be dismissed as a momentary blip of an “oh, I changed my mind” decision is actually a mountain of thoughts, noticings, wonderings, wanderings, thrown into the simmer of our day-to-day experiences.

And all those things we tell ourselves (and often believe)? They’re usually wrong:

++ We tell ourselves that the world will call us flakes when we actually have extraordinary perception skills.

++ We tell ourselves that we can’t make anything stick when we’re actually artisans who’ve honed our skills of building and adding on and revising for our entire lives. 

++ We tell ourselves that we can’t be trusted when it’s actually our ability to be honest—to say out loud when something is no longer working, to continue to learn what we want (because of course that want is ever-changing, just as we are ever-living)—that lets people know that we can be trusted. 

It’s as if our integrity is a living, breathing entity that walks alongside us.

I’m telling you this for 3 reasons:

1. I’m currently in a big I’ve changed my mind chapter:

• I’m coming out of a year-long business pivot and am just about to hit a new starting point.
• I’ve taken my-brand-since-2014 concept of “Raise your hand, say yes” and flipped it upside down for my 2022 Year of No.
• I’m reconsidering all sorts of decisions I made in the past, from what color the walls of my office are to what kind of jeans I want to wear to which tools I use for my business. (Which mostly means: money has already been spent and my mean shitty inner voice says, “Why can’t you just leave well enough alone?”)

1. You might also be in a shift of your own. And a huge piece of my work is to tell you that you aren’t alone. That those feelings you’re resisting and feeling and dancing with and pushing against don’t make you alone. They make you human. (And this is one place you can talk about those muddy bits out loud.)
2. Why can’t you just leave well enough alone? <— that’s the question that always stops us in our tracks, isn’t it?

I know we’re so practiced at letting that question win any time we wonder if there’s something…more true calling to us.

We’re so adept at deciding things are good enough we don’t even allow ourselves to ponder moving towards anything but exactly what we have right now “why can’t you just be more grateful??”

(This is the part where I also remind you of discernment, faith, grace, spirit-tending…those all-important pillars of radical self-belief. If you fully trusted yourself, in which  direction would you let yourself gaze?)

What I want to say is that you’re allowed to look.

You’re allowed to listen.

You’re allowed to consider the possibility that your next step is going to look mildly (or wildly) different.

You’re allowed to crack the window of possibility and imagination and intuition to let some air in.

Maybe you’ll realize that yes! you really do what the thing.

Maybe you’ll decide you actually like where you are.

Maybe you’ll delight upon an entirely new path.

No matter the outcome, you’re allowed to breathe into this moment. To come home to yourself. To know whatever it is you know as true. 

And, may you always proceed with love.