Awareness is awesome. Until it isn’t enough. You can rattle off your resistance and describe every inch of how you hold yourself back. You can paint a picture of your patterns and how they keep you stuck. Yet, for how well you see your shadow, you don’t know how to move beyond it to create what feels impossible. You’re stuck IN IT. And all you want is to be free of it. That’s because awareness doesn’t cut it. You have to USE IT. When you’re aware of how you’re blocked, you’re not actually blocked—you’re choosing to be. Where it looks like you have a problem, what if there’s simply a...

Expectations are the kill joy of your dreams. And they are as vital to you as the air that fills your lungs. Expectations are the stuff you use to construct your perfect world. They are the measurement of choice when it comes to deciding whether things are going right/wrong or good/bad. When things measure up, all is calm and great. When things don’t measure up, your world turns upside down. Anger, frustration, disappointment—they feed on the fantasy in your head, tearing it to shreds along with the last ounce of power you could have used to create what you actually want. That’s the thing with expectations—they steal your power away....

This forest is unlike any I’ve ever known. It smells sweet. A scent you’d get from sap and pine needles baking in the heat. The air is clean and cool. The trees are strange—short, scrubby pines, twisting towards the sky. The wind whooshes through their tops, making a sound like ocean waves in the distance. I secretly wonder if they learned to imitate the sea from living next to it. Wandering down the pine needle path, sun spots dance in the grass and moss speckles the forest floor. There’s magic here. It’s palpable and real and I stop to breathe it in, taking it into me. When you’re grounded, you’re...