This year has been the hardest year of my life. 35 years of beliefs, assumptions, and dogma about who I am, what life is about, and where it’s all heading caught up with me in a big way. Total breakdown.

The experience has me asking some new, better questions. 

All the years of meditating, reading, studying, self reflection, and general digging around in my mind, body, and soul, I finally struck oil. It seems I found a core wound and that thick, black, suffocating well of ancient decay has offered an ample fountain of painful transformation. 

Since a very young age I’ve taken the duty of wrestling with my demons very seriously. In recent years, my mindfulness practices and relationship with Ada have both offered often uncomfortable, but fruitful mirrors through which to see myself and life more clearly and more honestly.

Along the way, I’ve prided myself on having a growth mindset, and when I think back to major life challenges, I can see a story of resilience and possibility. But this year, this discovery, this wound, something changed. The resilience slipped. And I found myself spiraling into new territory, and it felt bottomless. I was loosing faith.

Even with an incredible support network, an unbelievably loving and supportive partner who was patient and kind at every step of the way, even in the midst of an outwardly beautiful life, I was losing faith in myself and in the ultimate goodness of the universe. I was questioning everything. 

In the confusing 9 or so months since this breakdown, as I’ve been sorting through the pieces, I’ve consistently come back to two words which have become the foundation for an entirely new way of relating with life:

Everything changes. 

The meaning hidden in these 2 words has been a lifeline and saving grace. 

Of course, in hard times, the long standing wisdom that “this too shall pass,” presents itself here in a compelling way. But for me, this message has been secondary. For me, the message of these words isn’t about weathering storms trusting that things will get better, the message is about a fundamental shift in my understanding about the nature of the universe. 

If everything changes, and change requires a shift from one thing to another, then change is exchange, and exchange is relationship. 

I’ve lived much of my life under the prevalent western assumption that life is a thing, a noun. You have yours, and I have mine. It’s limited, and you use it up like you use up crayons or an allowance. If you ration it, and manage it well, it should last about 85 years. And if you do it right, those 85 years should be fairly enjoyable. Naturally, as I got the hang of it, I began to compare mine against others, and determined to spend mine at least as well, if not better, than the next guy. 

I took it pretty hard when I screwed up. I regretted when I missed opportunities. I felt devastated at botched relationships. I felt constantly frustrated and critical with my performance and my management of my own limited resources. What is it that I can make of this life? I needed to make something of myself! 

All these years I’ve been trying to make something of myself. Prove my worth. Fix my problems. Right my wrongs. Earn my place. Be good enough, smart enough, right enough, wise enough, kind enough, and try hard enough.

Don’t get me wrong, I tried to live into the truth that I am enough. I said as much to myself nearly every day, and I made sure others knew it about themselves too. But when you see your life as something to make, you just can’t help but notice all the ways it does and doesn’t measure up to others. 

All the while, my practices amounted to an obsessive digging around in an attempt to find the root of the problem which is obviously making it so hard to measure up. There had to be some reason why I kept screwing up. And if I could find it, I’d be able to heal it, and start really living that awakened life I felt sure was possible. 

Eventually I found what I was looking for. An infinite abyss of unworthiness that has been urging me toward harder better faster and stronger my whole life. There’s no filling that hole, this kind of discovery required a radical shift in my very understanding of what life is. 

What I have failed to really recognize, in all these 35 years, is that life is not a thing to manage. It’s an exchange to enjoy. It’s a relationship to enter into. It’s an invitation into a give and take. Life isn’t something to make, it’s an experience! 

The implications of this shift are profound, and we’ll be unpacking them in upcoming emails and sharing how we can apply and practice these profound realizations through our foundational methodology: The Wakes Way. 

In February, we’re gathering for a transformative retreat where we’ll share aspects of this framework and practice together, letting go of the need to make problems out of our lives. Instead, we’ll step into life’s incredible exchange of wonder, peace, presence, wisdom, freedom, and grace.

The way to healing is more simple than it seems, it’s an open door. All we need is to step through to remember and awaken to who we really are. From there, we get to enter into the dance of exchange, learning about what it means to be a part of it, what we have to offer, and where we can bring the gift of our own awakened light. 

All you need is willingness to step through that door. Transformation rarely announces itself with flashing lights or voices from the clouds. More often, it begins with an uncomfortable wake-up call – like mine did. But the real shift happens in those daily moments when we say yes to life, again and again.

Are you ready to say yes?
Join us this February to discover your own door to transformation.

Learn more about the retreat HERE.