True Growth comes from Diving into the Depths of the Unknown.

Recently, I have been going through a period of many unknowns in my life.

It feels as though everything I knew about myself and my life has been flipped upside down into something completely opposite of what I knew to be “true.” My life is something that I no longer recognize. It feels scary and, in a way, exhilarating at the same time.

There are many parts of me that desperately want to cling to old ways of being and the “comforts” that I had come to know and love.

If I’m being completely honest, almost all of me wants to cling to what I know. Because in these walls of knowing and predictability, I feel safe—or I think I feel safe. I believe that I have control over my life and what happens to me on a daily basis.

Yet at the same time, I find that I am slowly being suffocated by these comforts that make me feel “safe.” It feels as though my life force and vitality are slowly being drained from my rainbow essence into something lacking any of its signature color. Instead, it feels as though my life is simply streaked in grey.

I believe that so many of us feel this way. We desperately want to change our lives and grow into the humans we dream about, but we are afraid of the unknown. We are afraid of throwing ourselves into the river of life—for there are many unknowns contained in this river.

Sometimes, she is a raging force of power that calls us to be thrown into new ways of being and seeing our reality. At other times, she is a calm body that allows us to float on her surface.

The point is when we decide to “take the jump” or “leap” into this river, we have no idea what will happen or where we will end up. So many of us (myself included) want to know our future before taking any action. We want to know if we will succeed, be happy, or end up in a better place than we started.

But this is not the way of the world, nor should it be.

If we knew what our futures had in store—if we could see what the pot contained at the end of the rainbow—then where would the magic lie?

To me, it is not so much about reaching the pot. It is about the journey of finding the courage to leap into the river and knowing that I have the creativity, strength, and resources to survive whatever she brings into my path.

This is where true growth occurs. It is in the unknown times where we can choose how we want to react and what we want to do. There are many paths to take and each path will mold us into something different than we are now. We always have this choice to plunge straight into the vital waters of life.

But so many of us let our fear take the wheel and we find ourselves spending our life waiting on the river banks while watching others dive in headfirst.

Diving in means that you will sometimes flail and splash about wildly, swim with ease, or drown in the depths of the unknown in order to be reborn into something new. But the most important thing is that you took the leap in the first place!

When we sit back and wait because we are afraid of life, we can almost guarantee that we will stay the same as we were and always have been. We will stay the same and be immersed in our comforts. And guess what? Fear will still be present in our lives.

Fear will be in our lives—no matter what. But when we dive headfirst into it, we come out the other side knowing that we not only survived but we came out stronger and as a different version of ourselves that is more aligned with our truth.

Fear is not something to conquer; the unknown is not something to conquer. They are tools we can use to move through and to become more familiar with.

I believe that we all have the ability to create the life that we want. Becoming more comfortable in the uncomfortable times (and feelings) is how we can shed layers of who we thought ourselves to be in order to be left with our wild and true selves. In my upcoming online course, I offer my clients the chance to take the leap and tune into their wild and true selves.

So, what are you waiting for? You can choose to take the leap and see where the river will flow or you can sit back and watch others sink, swim, and everything in-between.

The point is not that they are “succeeding” in their swim, but that they are swimming in the first place.

As always, feel free to message me with any insights, questions, or comments!

Happy Swimming:)

Why We Need To Go Through Change:

Today, I am going to talk about change as it relates to our growth and evolution as souls in human form.

We are always changing and growing.

We can take a lesson from the natural world that nothing ever stays the same. the seasons change, yet they are all necessary in the grand scheme of things.

Why do we change? Why can’t we just stay the same? Yes, this would be easier.

It would definitely be a lot more comfortable, but it would also be a lot less fun and fulfilling. Of course, if we really wanted to stubbornly stay the same person for our whole lives, cultivating the same habits and personality, we could. But that is not why we are here.

We are here to grow and evolve into the people that we are meant to be. Every waking moment is a chance for us to grow and become more aligned with our values and our calling.

How cool is that?

We all have experiences that shape us. We have families, relationships, and systems we engage in, art that provokes us and makes us break open into new realizations. We take all of these in, and this assembles how we view our reality.

We are always moving and learning and taking in new world-views, thoughts, and ideas that make up how we see our world. Each moment we can choose to view these new ideas and perceptions through our old lenses or ways of being.

Or we can choose to view them in a whole new way.

Life is all about how we see things. We can have the same situation, and we can choose to see this situation in many different ways. This will shape our lives. It will shape our present moment, how we react to experiences, how we treat others, and how we treat ourselves. This is extremely important to consider. We truly have the power to make our life what we want it to be.

Yes, a lot of the time we have no control over external events. But we do have the choice with how we choose to view this event.

We can say, “Why is this happening to me?” or “What is this showing me? What can I learn from this?”

Perhaps, we can think about a situation in our lives and try asking these questions in relation to our situation. Notice how we feel when asking these questions. Notice how this changes from question to question and how we look at the situation from the various perspectives of the questions being asked.

When we choose to engage with the same situations in new ways, we will begin to slowly unfold into a new being.

I think this is all the point of existence.

We are all in the great school of life, and we are here to have fun and also to learn from ourselves and from others. If I am not constantly challenging my world-views and ideas, then what am I doing? I cannot possibly know everything, and besides, everything there is to know is always changing.

Just look at science. At one point, we believed in a Newtonian Universe, and now we are experiencing a shift into a quantum one! Amazing.

What will happen next for us? We cannot possibly know.

Yes, change is scary and difficult.

We attach ourselves fully to our identity, career, jobs, and relationships. Now, stop and think.

“Who am I without all of these things?”

Who are we without all of the external labels that we associate ourselves with? All of these things will leave us eventually. In death, we cannot bring any of these things with us. All we can bring is who we are, underneath all of the things that we think make up who we are.

I painted a sign recently that reads, “Who am I?” I plan to post it above my door in hopes that when I walk through my door each day, I am constantly asking myself, “Who am I?” because the me that I am is always changing each and every day.

Here is our permission slip to ask ourselves this question: “Who am I?”

We might find that we are scared to know the answer. Feel into this fear because never asking yourself the question is an even scarier notion.

The good news is we always have the ability to create the life we want and desire. I firmly believe that we are all inherently creative and that we have the ability to cultivate the life that is meant for us. Seriously.

What is stopping you from making the changes you want to make?

The answer is (and you might not like it): you.

That is the only thing standing in your way. You.

We can come up with a bunch of excuses in our lives to blame our circumstances on, but the hard truth is that no one can make the changes they want to see happen but themselves.

Don’t wait for the perfect moment either. This will never exist. If we keep waiting for it to happen, we will spend our lives looking out the window while the world keeps spinning. The world will not wait for us. But the world does call for us to embrace these changes and to embark on the journey that we are meant to go on.

So what are we waiting for?

Take the leap and jump into the unknown. I have done this many times, and each time, I have been deathly afraid. I have clutched onto so many things that did not serve me, yet it was so hard to let go for what I thought I “knew.”

But I can promise you that the unknown is always worth it. Walking blindly through the dark and damp cave and not knowing where you will come out have always been worth it.

Why fight the cycles of growth and change? Why not lean into them instead?

To get a different outcome, we have to do something different.

And I promise, to do something is what makes all of the difference.

Boundaries!!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been taking a hiatus from the blog for a while. I honestly didn’t feel like writing anything and I don’t believe in doing some just for the sake of doing it. However, now I am feeling the pull to write and share again, so here I go! Thank you all for understanding the ebb and flow. Today I am writing about boundaries. Honoring them for ourselves as well as respecting other’s and the boundaries that they have for themselves.

This topic has been very relevant in my life lately. Setting boundaries has been a hard thing for me to do throughout my life. Sticking to them has been even more difficult for me to do. I don’t like making other people feel bad or uncomfortable, but I’ve noticed that when I put others wants and needs in front of my own it usually ends in me feeling drained emotionally and physically. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t put others in front of ourselves sometimes, I think it is great doing things for others! But it’s when we are constantly putting others in front of ourselves that the situation can turn sour.

Not having boundaries can lead to us feeling bad about ourselves and our ability to stand up for what we really want in life. Sometimes it is good to say no! To take time away to focus on self-care, following our dreams, or even dreaming about what we want. But if we are constantly saying yes to things we know we don’t want, just because we are worried about what others may think, we take away from ourselves. Whether this be energy, moments, time alone, hobbies, etc.

Society likes to tells us that we are selfish if we put ourselves first instead of others, but we are actually being selfish if we let others dictate how we want to live our lives. Selfish in a way that we are not truly our best selves when we don’t follow the boundaries we have set up for ourselves. If we don’t feel our best inside; if we feel depleted energetically and emotionally within; than this will for sure show up in what we project to our outside world.

It can be difficult to set boundaries because we have fears about missing out on certain events, fears about what others will think of us, etc. But when we do this others will know what to expect of us. They will learn to respect us because we respect ourselves and our needs. If you don’t respect what you really need and want, how can you expect others to? This is a hard lesson that I had to learn!

Remembering to respect the boundaries that others have set for themselves is an important aspect as well. A lot of people put their happiness in others, again this all comes back to attachments! Ah, everything really is connected! But something I’ve been learning also recently is that real love means letting someone live their life how THEY want to, and not how we think they should. If they want to do something alone, take up a new hobby, meditate every morning, then we should let them do what they would like! And if that doesn’t include us, then we have to accept that. None of us belong to anyone, none of us own anything, and when we act like we do, it can sometimes feel suffocating for ourselves and for others.

Setting boundaries may look like choosing to stay home and practice yoga instead of going out with friends or working on your latest project instead of binge-watching a show with your roommates. Sometimes the latter is great, but again it all comes back to balance. It all comes back to listening to ourselves, to the inner voice. It’s easy to get swept up in our outer world; in our friends, family, jobs, affiliations. It’s easy to get lost and forget what it is we actually long to do in this life, who we are/who we would like to be. But it’s important to remember that we are all human, and we all stumble, but eventually we all pick ourselves up again and have the opportunity to grow and learn from what life throws at us!

Its all a crazy journey, yet exciting! Feel free to message me or comment. Hope you all are dong well out there!

Peace humans,

Rylee