I've had a lot of things work in my favor throughout life. I grew up with a loving family, supportive friends, mentors, went to a great college, launched a great career...the list goes on. The problem was that after a life full of milestones and achievements, I found myself looking around shortly after the start of an exciting career, wondering to myself "and now what?" Now. Freaking. What?! What am I doing? And what do I do next? The preset checklist of "How-to: Your Guide to Living Life in the "Right" Order" had just reached the point of meet the man of my dreams, get married, have babies. And yea, in 2010 at 23/24 years old, early in my career and living in NY, I knew I didn't want that yet. Also, Prince Charming hadn't shown up yet...so there was that. LOL.
I felt lost, confused and shallow. I liked my life most days but I also knew that I wanted more. Add onto that the fact that I was quickly beginning to realize that though I enjoyed a lot about my career in advertising, it wasn't what I wanted to do forever. So I began asking myself the question, what is my purpose? If I could do anything in the world, what would I do?
Fast forward six years later...I'm on the brink of 30 living a life that I'm SO happy with. I travel, I'm surrounded by amazing family & friends, I own my own business-ES (yes, plural) doing things I absolutely love and I live a life of service. Is my life perfect, heck no! Prince Charming still hasn't shown up (when he gets here I'm buying him a GPS because clearly his sense of direction is off lol), there are still things and people that annoy me, I still don't have a 4-pack (I don't actually want all 6 abs) and I still live on something like a budget (in my highest possibility life, budgets do not exist). But I'm HAPPY. And the things that make me happiest now were available to me all along but it took some changes to see that.
So what changed? Me. I let go. Of quite a lot, actually. Starting with that stupid checklist of what my life was supposed to look like and in what order. All it did was give me something to look at and say "see, you're clearly not good enough for (fill in the goal). And if you can't get/do/be that, why do you think you could get/do/be (fill in another goal)?" And the crazy thing is, I wasn't even the one that made up the checklist I was measuring myself against. If I had made it up, that list would have said something like "be free and do whatever it is you freaking want! And naps...definitely take naps." Freedom was never going to be available to me when I was measuring life against that checklist. Never. Ever. Period.
After the list was gone, I started letting go of all the residue it left behind. Believing I was unworthy, comparing myself to others, the need to be right all the time (even at the expense of my own peace), expecting perfection, settling for people/places/things that did not meet the level of my life's vision, relationships, clutter in my home...the list goes on. All of it had to go. Like, ASAP! Only once I was willing to let go of things that were holding me back was there enough space for God to come in and begin showing me new visions, bringing new opportunities, filling me with a light and lightness that I had never experienced before. And it is a continual process. As I'm writing this post right now I'm considering what I need to let go of that's causing me to have anxious feelings about still being single. Even when so many things are going so incredibly well, why do I allow frustration, hurt and feelings of helplessness to creep in when I think about my love life? I'm honestly not sure. But I'm willing to look. And when I see/feel/understand why, I'm willing to let go of anything that is in the way of me reaching my highest possibility.
Nothing will ever again be more important to me than living MY unique life, designed specifically for me by God. Letting go has been one of the most profound tools in the toolbox I use to co-create my life with God. This freedom that I've stepped into, it is worth one thousand times anything I've given up to get here. The job, the relationship, the residue. I've gained so much on the other side of letting those things go.
What can you let go of today? Give it a thought.
Love,
Fatima Marie
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