Our life’s Trajectory…

Our life’s trajectory & the storylines we create are often defined by our repetitive internal narrative. 

In my early twenties, following a traumatic event involving my boss while working at a cafe, I acquired insomnia. Not the kind that comes and goes, the kind that stays for years fuelled by sleep performance anxiety. Night after night, the more I tried to sleep, the less I did. It turned into a fear of sleep all because of a job, I dreaded waking up to (hence the boss narrative). I quit the job and the insomnia stayed for twenty-five years to be exact. Yes, I’m aging myself here. Now, how in the world did this last that long… well after finding finding my way through using CBTI techniques, meditation, meaning I didn’t use any sort of sleep medications, knowing full well the repercutipns would land me back in insomnia alley I realized the narrative I played out in my head The Fluidity of Goal Creation & the Path of Least Resistance - how reflection (addressing underlying beliefs) can lead to healthy prototyping and pause that gives way for the path of least resistance.  

First off let’s define prototyping so as to set up your reading pleasure with clear definitions: 

Prototyping - Re-diverting often within an actionable project/goal - in order for this to happen, allowance in failure is paramount.  I don’t tend to use the term failure’ often because most people have a negative attachment to the term but for the sake of understanding I will use it here. 

I recently had a coaching session where I was asked to write out some goals I had for myself. As I wrote -  I felt myself spiraling into this abyss of panic and anxiety.  How could this be happening I thought.  This is such a simple exercise in the ILS group I facilitate, I journal all the time with more in depth issues! 

My mind was swirling with ideas and to-dos that I felt needed to get done in order for those ideas to transpire! I was overwhelmed, but why? I took some deep breaths. Set my ideas aside and decided to de-stress by making myself a pancake. I didn’t come back around to addressing the issue until my next coaching session, where my coach asked me why I thought that was happening and to my chagrin I actually had to think about it. The only answer I could come up with, at first, was. “It’s hard to dial it down.” How do I focus on one thing when I have so many ideas and she said to me “yes,  It is hard. That’s why you’ve decided to get a coach”, and for some reason this relaxed my anxiety about the issue somewhat. It’s almost as if this new acknowledgment of struggle helped me understand that maybe I had never allowed myself to acknowledge this struggle before. I had never truly said it out loud or addressed it.  What a beautiful thing awareness can be.  We then made a manageable plan for one goal! Just one! It’s not that I won’t accomplish other goals that are already consciously engrained in my routine, but this was a goal I had been struggling with and creating a timeline that allowed for breaks made it seem so doable.  Throughout my coaching session I also complained about some reason I couldn’t get it done under my breath. My coach immediately picked up on it and called me out. “What’s the fear behind your diversion?” she asked.  I exacerbatingly told her I wanted to know for certain it will work out. Then she asked me - “What’s the worst thing that could happen if it doesn’t?”  “Well shite! nothing major!” I stated. And there it was. The narrative that didn’t exist that I was giving value to. I knew I would enjoy doing it and that no matter what I would never regret this endeavor.  Even if it didn’t get the attention needed for an end goal I had in mind. This is how I knew that what I was doing was within my line of divine vision. I would be acting on my joy! And practicing what I preached.  One subject I go over in the ILS group of the community, is the idea of getting in the gap. This is a term I had heard in my twenties about allowing yourself the space to process and step away from something.

I believe I had in the past with my goals felt a pressure to achieve it now! all of it.  Don’t put it off’ my subconscious (learned program) was screaming.  If you do, you won’t finish it. And this couldn’t be further from the truth now that I look back at all the goals I had achieved.  Every single one of them was started and stopped and put off slowly developing in its own time.  I had given myself permission with other goals and subconsciously and graciously allowed for pause between them without pushing for a determinate ending or even outcome and they had transpired! But there was a deeper learned subconscious belief that had stunted this specific  goal creation coming about in this way as well and maybe was the whole reason it never transpired at all, because it wasn’t following a path of least resistance - A path where space and a gracious testing of the waters was given.  I like to call that prototyping.  

Awareness allows us to gather information and re-direct subconscious behavior!  

Can you make a promise to yourself? Can you give yourself permission to get in the gap within a goal and to let it transpire in a way that is fluid and slow if needed? Whether it’s a new goal or one on repeat - are you allowing the needed space for the goal to transpire in a holistiic and natural way?  Does it feel rushed? Is it in alignment with your deeper divine self? 

How to know…. Ask yourself - what’s the worst that could happen if it doesn’t end up the way you want it to?  This is where the goal can be valued at exactly what it is.  Does the doing’ of the goal create joy in your innermost being?  If it does, you know it’s yours to keep and you can let it transpire in the path of least resistance, trusting that it will happen.  

 after night.  

It wasn’t as simple as ‘I’m not going to sleep tonight again’ it was me imagining how I would function at work the next day in a state of exhausted again.  You see my imagination would run away with me - because it had happened so often.  I would literally imagine almost every detail of my day being littered with sad, delirious Sarah wondering around - trying to cope. Now if any of you have had insomnia for any length of time you understand how excruciatingly hard it is to function like this.  You feel like a ghost of yourself - the living dead. My imagination was so strong that I never realized that I was creating this narrative for myself to play out again and again. After I was married my husband and I starting reading the power of your subconscious mind, and this triggered my awareness to go inward with this issue. I became aware of this thought pattern and although it took me awhile to get out of it I believe my insomnia is finally at a feasible level, of normalcy. Meaning it only happens here and there in mild spurts and for reasons generally expected. which I can handle. Noticing the thought pattern was the first step, once noticed I reframed it or redirected it, with a new scenerio that disrupted the pattern. sometimes I was too tired to replace it with something so I would just go find something else to do that I enjoyed.  Redirecting in an actionable way and this was all dependant on how I felt in that moment.  Some nights I had extra energy to expend. 

Now there are many other issues I also addressed through self discovery to warrant this hiatus of a twenty-five year sleep drought, such as accepting my needs and boundaries but that’s for another story. I do believe this was a really big timeline jump for me. 

Is there a storyline you have on repeat that is creating a narrative that no longer serves the divine nature that you know is you? It all begins with an idea.