The importance of choosing paths that resonate deeply with one's identity & values, even when they diverge from conventional expectations or safety, can lead to a life & career that is not only more fulfilling but also deeply authentic.

Making demands without personal accountability or regard for personal capacity is Emotional Entitlement. Placing expectations on others to innately understand us is the source of our disappointment when they don’t. It is hypocritical to hold others responsible for sensing & delivering needs that we are unwilling to declare & secure for Self. The real issue isn't having expectations but failing to consider how we'll cope if they're unfulfilled. 

In a relationship, where & with whom is emotional entitlement cast upon you, & where & with whom do you apply it?

If your behavior was incubated & motivated by love, how would you move if every action felt meaningful to fulfill over making moves to fulfill an expectation?

When we relate to Self as both difficult to figure out & difficult to please, life becomes work with little space for play, let alone work WITH play, & even less space to allow for meaningful moments where there is purpose to NO WORK & ONLY PLAY.

Energy teaches us capacity. It teaches us how to spot what nurtures to understand how nourishment does & does not feel. We need to learn to spot what sources us and what doesn’t.

When we’re able to identify what is not for us, we can pause in moments where contrary energies are being served or trying to motivate us, to notice if or when we’re inclined to operate without integrity. Without accountability of & consideration for capacity. Without knowing if what we’re about to engage in is something we’re willing to take 100% responsibility for.

If we become desensitized to what infringes on us, neglects us, & acts without regard for us, we can not only become unconscious of how it negatively influences us to act without intent & responsibility, but numb to even notice that it is. We can start to believe it is ok to threaten us into action.  Natural, normal, even. It becomes our programming. It becomes a survival pattern reaction to force effort, with a hyper-vigilant DOING response to threatening energy. 

When we operate from threat, it can not only influence self-government but relational engagement. It can cause us to infuse forceful energy into how we engage others. We can become unconscious of trusting that energy & then unknowingly enact it everywhere.

Sometimes what creates progress is the opposite of perfection & is often also known as INTERESTING, CREATIVE, ORIGINAL, INSPIRING, DELICIOUS, LIFE-CHANGING, BEAUTIFUL & ART.

Greatness is giving Self permission to be creative, & interesting.

Greatness is the relief behind relaxing into accepting the benefits of our Essence & authenticity.

Greatness is fucking around, finding abundance & space to celebrate it.

Greatness is learning to inspire inner discovery & teach how expansive & nurturing it is to explore.

Trusting ourselves makes us great.

Courage makes us great.

Perfectionism is a true blockage to our greatness.

How we relate to emotions like those which typically are labeled negative, characterizes our reactions TO them & often our interactions WITH them. It gives them the ability to empower or overwhelm us. 

The difference in a positively balanced experience with emotion, then, is cultivated by the acceptance of our relationship with what we’re feeling. Its prioritization, however, can cause us to unconsciously reject or deny what is contrary.

Rejecting stress, fear, anger, grief, denial, regret, getting elevated, etc., as useful, purposeful, or manageable is what makes its experience less favorable & less tolerable.

How we view purpose, utility & capacity defines how we experience what we’re present to & how we manage our presence or become activated with it.

You are someone who moves thoughtfully with regard for energy, utilizing precision & a specifically harnessed intent that is equal parts analytical & tactical.

In other words, you are someone who does not care to waste your or others mother fucking time.

This methodology of pinpointing an objective, noticing where & why it is obstructed, and then facing issues to move forward with clarity is known as going backward to move forward or beginning with the end in mind.

Operating with a positive intention to assess what could fuck up progress, we can forget that facing a problem is a healthy, important aspect of how we process information.

I see now how a free person’s unattachments can challenge those trapped in theirs. 

I see now that anything fully enjoyed can make us feel rich & abundant when we learn to be unapologetic about how moved we are in our own experience with its art.

I see now how important it is to know our attachments & what prevents us from living free-spiritedness as art alive.

I see now why it’s important to choose what echoes abundance, livens the spirit, & reflects our life’s artistry to set us free.

Vegas is designed to titillate your senses. Make you think about the restrictions of everyday life. Challenge that perspective. Open yourself up to the possibility of exploring uninhibited expression, but also learn how to embrace a healthy relationship with it.

It’s ‘Here Kitty, Kitty’ delivers for me every time. Its consistency is inconsistent at best. It’s never the same. EVER. It’s unapologetic about it. And, I FUCKING LOVE IT.

Its audacity welcomes me to be wholly as weird & extra as I truly am. Flaunt it. And, rub elbows with those unashamed to be seen doing it, too.

The truth is, there is malice in the world intended to be damaging. But a lot of the time, the damage that is done on a daily basis is not in the difference of our actions or in personality-based arguments on preference. It’s in our intolerance to admit that, in our culture, entitlement exists and our emotions are preyed upon to encourage and perpetuate fear-based division around where dissimilarity occurs.

In the middle, shit gets real. 

It’s where we typically decide if we can go forward or not, & if we have to, it’s where we dig deep to find the will to trek onward. It’s where our determination & integrity are tested. It’s where experience calls us to find appreciation for the engagement or activity, not solely its fruits or outcome.

Culturally, we seem stuck in a fear-based model. As Ram Dass says, fear is not the problem. It’s the model of having a problem. It seems to be a problem of Moral Righteousness & weaponizing hypocrisy. It’s a do whatever you want unto others, and at the moment, ignore that you wouldn’t like it done to you. It’s a combo that is creating a cultural, metaphorical Molotov Cocktail.

The issue with ‘needy people’, or ‘special snowflakes’, isn’t that those who are, hold standards inappropriately. It’s that when we find special snowflakes unpalatable, it’s because we don’t know how to be with them. And, we don’t know how, because we haven’t yet learned stability in responding within our own standards.

The issue isn’t other people’s standards. They’re theirs. We don’t have to indulge them. There are ways to address what we CAN & CANNOT be with about them. But, when in conflict about having the audacity to exercise our full humanity in the presence of another’s, therein lies the issue.

The issue is in learning to relish safely being whole when another is exercising their wholeness, too.

What has revealed itself over the last few years is that Presence was missing from my life. People-pleasing had been unconsciously wreaking havoc on my divergent nervous system for -probably- as long as I’ve been alive. And, due to all those things being covertly dormant, I had been unconsciously operating as an angry, codependent, hypocrite, in -like- a lot, A LOT, of places.

The greatest gift we can share with humanity is to allow for humanity. It is to surrender to being human with Self which allows us to empathize it within Other. It is to recognize that intolerance of this is too expensive a cost for us all. It is to humble ourselves to reflect on challenging moments -OURS OR OTHERS- with a soft heart. It’s to honor truth with a love for its existence, its resonance, & its difference. It’s to accept that anything with power over us was given that authority by us & to reflect steadfastly on it. It is to allow humanity to be an authentic expression. It is to create a world in which all can feel safely welcome to be & to belong. It is to allow each of us to be our own brand of human, & to do our part in creating as well as advocating for a World in which all can safely be it.

Identifying joy as permission to defile agency is killjoy behavior. It’s being a grinch. It’s finding pleasure in spoiling happiness or maligning your/others intent for its expression. It’s a signal there’s a deep craving for safety in joy & uninhibited presence. It’s a cry to claim belonging, freely. It’s a longing to hear, “Your wholeness is lovable, always was & will be.” It’s recognition that there might be room to reconcile what within (you) finds it intolerable to witness uninhibited expression of humanity (in another), because you, yourself, find such behavior unsafe, inaccessible, or challenging.

When learning to embody self-love, we become sovereign & capable of admiring its mutuality. We are capable of practicing the capacity to feel its potency, value its authority, & exercise its expression in sincerity with others. We find the audacity to exist from love, grow & operate from it. And, when we mature in love, it's because we’ve learned to harness its safety to no longer worry about defending its personal presence or perspective against dissimilarity, arguments, or external disapproval. We learn to live in its autonomy, to become love’s liberty, but not only for Self, for ALL.

A part of allowing a self-love affair, of granting self-permission to be nobody, has been telling the truth and accepting the consequences. I used to think that if I took the space I needed in the world that I’d be alone. I’d have nobody.

I guess that when you go through a tremendous loss and grief, you start to reconsider a lot of things. For me, it has been reconsidering the term, nobody.

In the considering of what it means to be nobody, its meaning has morphed. I think it makes sense to have things morph when you face the frailty of humanity that undoubtedly confirms that one day, YOU WILL DIE, so you need to learn to like yourself. Hell, that when you learn to love yourself, you realize that being alone is not so bad, and in fact, see Self as good company, and not just nobody but someone with whom you like to just Be.

I took a few weeks after Dad passed to submerge into grief. I don’t actually remember a lot from that period. What I do remember involves my first series of panic attacks that didn’t evolve due to illness.

One moment I’d be sitting, maybe even feeling ‘fine’, and the next I’d think about something that had happened leading up to Dad’s passing and I’d be on the floor gasping for air. The first one happened days after Dad was life-flighted to the TICU. We had just gotten off the phone with one of Dad’s nurses who was telling us that his progress was improving, and before I knew it, I was head in my hands, on the floor of my parent's kitchen, crying inconsolably, unable to breathe.