Hello beautiful.

If you are here reading this, I am willing to bet that you have some dreams for yourself. That you have some ideas and ideals of the life you want to lead, and the person you want to be.

I am sure some of these dreams are material in nature - wanting to be the healthiest version of yourself, wanting to have the best career you can have, wanting to manifest abundance, maybe you want to travel or lean a new language - all of which are amazing and beautiful.

That being said, I am also sure that the dreams that are closest and most dear to your heart centre around the KIND OF PERSON you want to be in this world.

These dreams may be to become the most loving, most compassionate, most positively influential, most creative, prolific and wise version of yourself that you can be.

In fact, I bet those material goals and dreams you have are offshoots of those deeper, more personal dreams.

In the end, you want to be the best possible You that you can be.

The fact that you have these dreams of self actualization means that you may currently be in a state where you are aware of - or maybe overly aware of - how you are NOT that person. These dreams most likely arise from the awareness that what you are doing now, how you are living now, is not serving you. Is not fulfilling you. Is not making you happy and does not feel authentic to who you know you are - or could be.

You may be in a space where your 'flaws' or your shortcomings are blairingly obvious to you. You may feel like every extra pound you carry on your body, every post on your business facebook page that gets no engagement, every time you judge or snap at someone - are all omens that point to the fact that you have some work to do.

That you have a journey up ahead. One that will take you from where you are now, to becoming that bright, shiny person you want to be.

What I am about to say applies to ANYONE who is on ANY kind of journey.

Whether that be a physical health journey, a mental health journey, a healing from disordered eating journey, a business building journey, a spiritual journey towards enlightenment, a finding a way to have a healthy relationship journey - any path at all.

What You Do When You Want To Change:

Generally, when you get an idea in your head that your current way of being is not working and thus you need to change, the first (or at least the second, third or fourth) thing you have the impulse to do is look for the people who have achieved the results you are looking for and/or the people who claim to know how to get to where you want to go.

This is the phase where you start to obsessively watch youtube videos of your favourite health gurus, spiritual guides and business buffs.

This is when you start going to classes and workshops.

This is when you read a bunch of biographies, magazine articles and blog posts.

Essentially, this is where you start to listen to people tell you their "I was once where you are, then some things happened, and now I am at this amazing, shiny place" stories.

You fill your mind and your time with other people's mountain top stories.

You listen intently while they describe to you what it is like for them now, how they are emotionally, how they eat, how they work out, how they handle their money, how they create an instagram post.

You start to feel that because you know what it is like to be where they are - where you want to be - because you understand how those people live, that this alone should enable you to do the same.

So you go out and start trying to do as they do.

You start trying to have no thoughts. No judgements. Compassion for all beings. 100% acceptance for life. No resistance. All peace and love all the time. Because that is what the spiritual guy does.

You start trying to eat a 100% 'pure' diet. You start running 6 miles a day. You start going to bed at 10 pm and waking up at 6 am. You start juicing and reading labels and doing squats. Because that is what the hot, healthy, fit girl does.

You start posting on instagram 100 times a day. You re-organize your finances. You dream big and only settle for the absolute best of the best in your work. You become unwilling to sacrifice or compromise. Because that is what the successful entrepreneur said they do.

And Then?

You fail.

You fall off your path.

You realize it is REALLY HARD to be like that person on the mountain top.

You realize you are really judgemental. That you don't like the here and now. That being nice to everyone all the time is impossible.

You eat cake. For dinner. You skip a workout. You find it impossible to stick to your sleep schedule.

You can't keep your production schedule. Your work/life balance gets off kilter. New clients are not knocking down your door as you expected they would.

You try your best to do the mountain top thing, only to realize you can't keep it up.

Then, You Make It Your Fault

Rather than admitting defeat, you look yourself in the mirror and you judge and criticize and condemn yourself for not being able to be like 'them.' You start to feel like you are weak, lazy, incapable, not trying hard enough, not good enough.

You take your inability to do as they do, as a sign that you suck.

You want to be on the top of the mountain, but getting there from here in one fell swoop is not possible.

But you think that it is.

You probably think that your inability to 'do as they do' is either a sign of your incompetence, OR you look at it as a sign that the people who are where you want to be have some sort of magical ability that you do not have OR worst of all, you think those people must just be lying to you.

Hearing About The Mountain Top Doesn't Get You To The Mountain Top

Any way you slice it, simply listening to what a person who is where you want to be telling you about what it is like to be there, is not going to get you to where you want to be.

Because what that person is doing as they sit where you want to be, is not what got THEM there either.

They took a path.

They had a journey.

They faced struggles and setbacks, trials and tribulations.

They have a whole story that culminated at their arrival at the top of the mountain.

But no one wants to hear about that.

You (and everyone else) do not want to hear the story, because you tend to think of it as rather irrelevant in the context of the overall achievement.

You most likely think of the story as the mistakes, the 'what not to do's', as the stuff they did BEFORE they figured out the actual thing they needed to get to where they are.

You think the story is the distraction from the shiny place.

And this, dear friend. Is why we get stuck.

You think of the path as the obstacle to your desired outcome, rather than the route to your desired outcome.

So you avoid the path. You resist the path. You pull away from the path.

And you stay exactly where you are.

In part two, I will talk more about this, for now, I want you to simply consider - could it be that you are stuck where you are, because you are afraid of the path?

For now, just think "Am I resisting my path, because the steps are not the ultimate destination? Am I unwilling to do the path, because I feel like it is 'wrong' when it is not the place I want to end up?"

<3