Around 6 months ago I was walking in the West Loop of Chicago, talking on the phone with my mom. Going on walks outside has been BIG for me since living alone. Something about the mixture of fresh air and taking my brain outside of my apartment that allows me to reflect and hear myself in a different way. This walk was memorable to me, however, because I was reflecting with my mom on my life since moving from Arizona to Chicago. I distinctly remember saying to her, “everything worked out for me the second that I gave myself permission for it to.” 

Six months prior to this conversation I was moving to Chicago in my head. I say “in my head” because I didn’t exactly have a plan or a distinct way that I was going to do it. I have never been much of a planner. In fact, the people that love me would probably argue that I am not a planner at all. Which is very true. (Hence moving across the country in the first place with no job). However, I am someone who once I make a decision, regardless of having a plan, it happens. I had decided that I was going to move to Chicago and out of Scottsdale. I had decided that I was going to work a remote job that would allow me to still be able to write on the side. I had decided that I was going to live alone. I didn’t have a plan for how I was going to do this, but I just knew deep inside of me that it was a plan that was already mine.

I have referenced the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle a few times in my blogs, but one of the biggest things that I took away from that book was her definition of her “Knowing.” Glennon describes the knowing as the answers that she finds when she sinks deep into herself. She says: 

“I can know things down at this level that I can’t on the chaotic surface. Down here when I post a question about my life—in words or abstract images—I sense a nudge. The nudge guides me towards the next precise thing, and then, when I silently acknowledge the nudge—it fills me. The Knowing feels like warm liquid gold filling my veins and solidifying just enough to make me feel steady, certain.” 

My Knowing, to me, isn’t negotiable, despite all the times I have tried to argue with it. I think about my past self who would call all of her friends in an attempt to reach a decision that was only going to impact me. Or the girl who would hold on to people that her Knowing was begging to be released. In order to hear your Knowing, you must be willing to quiet the noise. 

In my blog “The Balloon and the String” I talk about how the only way to come back to yourself is to know yourself. But the only way to know yourself is to listen to yourself. And the only way to listen to yourself is to shut off the distractions and sink down into yourself. 

I was introduced to meditating around 2 years ago from reading the book, “You’re a Badass” by Jen Sincero. Meditation and I still have an up and down relationship. I have never been a very patient person and my attention span is dwindling since the rise of TikTok. However, I can feel my brain shifting and the balloon floating higher when I haven’t sat down and been quiet with myself. 

Whenever I suggest meditation to friends or family, they usually say that they have tried but they can’t stop thinking about other things. They can’t be quiet with themselves. But here is where I want to reframe because meditation and being quiet with yourself are two different things. I have times where I sit down to meditate and eventually let my brain think all the thoughts. The thing about thinking the thoughts when you’re being quiet with yourself, is that you can let them pass. Give the thought acknowledgement and then let it go somewhere else. Before you know it you either 1. Are meditating 2. Had a really good idea that you can write down after or 3. Heard the answer to the question that you are asking yourself. Either way, you just became a little more in tune with yourself. 

I am not at all perfectly in tune with myself all the time. In fact, lately I have felt less in tune than normal. However, I have the tools and the answers that shift my perspective and bring me a little bit closer to my most authentic self every day. What I know is this-  the more that you trust yourself, the less planning you have to do. The more that you give yourself permission for the good things to happen to you, the more good things are going to happen. The second that you decide that YOU are worth the work, the work gets easier. Trusting yourself sometimes just looks like quieting the noise so you can hear yourself better.