The Greatest Obstacle To Your Creative Endeavors Is...(PART II)

HOW TO FOLLOW YOUR SOUL’S DESIRES THROUGH SELF AWARENESS

If you desire to create what you dream of and live your best life, it's important to understand yourself and identify the barriers that prevent you from doing so.

Unfortunately, many believe that external factors must change for them to have a fulfilling and pleasurable life—a certain income level, having a romantic partner, living in a dope house, having the freedom to travel, or maintaining a specific appearance. But many have come to realize that true fulfillment comes from internal transformation rather than attempting to create specific external experiences.

The question is: where should your focus reside?

The answer is to identify and integrate the internal mechanisms that prevent you from being in alignment with your Soul’s desires. Not doing so blocks you from being connected to your Soul which is essential to creating what you dream of. Being out of alignment results in stress, uncomfortable feelings, procrastination, and the lack of energy to act upon any ideas you may have. Successfully navigating this process leads to feelings of calmness, peace, happiness, excitement and joy.

This highlights the importance of developing self-awareness to recognize moments of stress and misalignment.

UNDERSTANDING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STRESS

Let's begin by exploring the mechanics of stress.

Understanding these mechanics enhances awareness of our own experiences with stress and this awareness enables us to leverage the benefits of stress when it arises.

Fact #1: Stress affects the body regardless of its intensity. When stress occurs, numerous biochemical events are triggered. If left unchecked, these reactions impair cognitive functions, drain energy, disrupt sleep patterns, and diminish emotional, mental, and physical effectiveness.

Fact #2: People often become desensitized to their stress. Instead of addressing the root causes, individuals tend to distract themselves or numb the discomfort caused by physical reactions. By avoiding stress, daily pressures accumulate, potentially leading to significant consequences such as dis-ease.

Fact #3: Many of our reactions to external stimuli are learned behaviors. Consider our response to cold weather; while many shiver or scream, individuals like Wim Hof have shown that we can retrain these responses. Similarly, we can retrain our reactions to stress.

Now that we've delved into the mechanics of stress, let's explore a perspective shift that can transform your relationship with stress and its impact on your life.

HOW YOU PERCEIVE STRESS…MATTERS!

In order to have this perspective shift, I want you to ask yourself how you perceive stress. Do you see it as positive or negative? Be honest with your answer.

Having a positive view of stress can be challenging for most individuals. Especially since most of society demonizes it.

Yet anything that is viewed through a negative lens will almost always block your ability to leverage whatever benefits are inherent to that person, place, or thing. No matter how “bad” or “negative” we may perceive that person, place, or thing to be. So in order to benefit from stress, it’s important to recognize how you perceive stress.

For me, a shift in how I viewed stress came through challenging experiences such as a serious injury that prematurely ended my professional athletic career.

As a young adult, I pursued a career in the NFL and was being heavily scouted by several teams. Then one day during practice, I tore the ACL in my left knee which ended my chances of achieving my dream.

It was devastating to say the least, and I found myself struggling with thoughts of suicide.

I had invested a ton of time, energy, and focus into realizing my dream of becoming a professional NFL player, envisioning it as my ticket out of poverty and financial struggle.

This experience revealed how deeply attached I was to the identity of being an athlete. I had subconsciously tied my worth and value to my performance on the field, which also translated into everything I did in life. I believed that excelling as an athlete or any endeavor I chose was the key to validation, attention, and love.

This experience exposed my unhealthy attachments and dependencies.

Despite the stress and discomfort I went through, it ultimately catalyzed personal growth and self-discovery. This was possible because I chose to make a decision to delve deeper into the underlying reasons for these experiences, which enabled me to learn and evolve rather than wallow in the pain of failing to achieve my dream.

This highlights the importance of reflecting on your perspective on stress. It can give you an opportunity to unlock immense potential for growth and transformation.

SO YOU'VE SHIFTED YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON STRESS, NOW WHAT?

Once you've embraced a healthy perception of stress, the next step is to recognize how you respond to it. Many people numb themselves, making it challenging to identify when it occurs.

Fortunately, our bodies give us signs and symptoms when we’re feeling stress.

Physically, stress disrupts major bodily systems such as the immune, cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, and endocrine systems. Symptoms include low energy, brain fog, fatigue, irritability, nervousness, anxiety, breathing difficulties, digestion problems, muscle aches, headaches, and sleep issues.

Think of these symptoms as the body's equivalent of a check engine light in a car. But in our fast-paced world, it can be easy to miss these signals. This is because we live in a society that puts hustling on a pedestal, which makes it difficult for many to slow down enough to check in on themselves and reflect on what’s going on within. Thankfully, technology like the Inner Balance device, developed by Heart Math, helps detect imbalances in real-time.

Heart Math, with over 40 years of heart research and 300 peer-reviewed studies, found that heart rhythms indicate stress levels. The Inner Balance device measures these rhythms, providing real-time stress data, which help us become more aware of stress triggers and uncovers the factors that cause you to be misaligned with your authentic Self.

Understanding that programmed responses contribute to stress allows for greater agency in managing it. Observing individuals like Wim Hof, who have successfully reframed the response to cold, illustrates this point. By becoming aware of underlying mechanisms, including thoughts, beliefs, and memories, you’ll give yourself a greater opportunity to activate your creativity and act on the ideas that flow through you.

With a fresh perspective on what keeps you from being able to create, the next step involves learning how to identify and integrate mechanisms that prevent you from being in alignment with your Soul and Universal Intelligence, which makes it difficult for you to effectively pursue creative endeavors.

If you feel compelled to, go ahead and leave your email so you can receive the follow up to this memo, which outlines how to identify and integrate these mechanisms.

Or if you’re ready to get straight to it, just contact me directly and apply for my 1-1 coaching program by clicking here.

YOU CAN’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.

But be forewarned.

This journey isn’t for the faint of heart.

You must enter it with humility and a willingness to be honest and truthful about where you REALLY are in life. You have to admit that in some areas - or maybe many - you simply don’t know what you’re doing.

Because in order to know yourself and be more capable of effectively pursuing your creative endeavors, or any endeavor for that matter, you must be ok with at first being a fool. You have to be willing to shed your arrogant ego.

But you need to lose that arrogant ego since it is exactly what’s in the way of you being aligned with your authentic self and your ability to achieve what you dream of.

Most of all, you need to be willing to take on such an adventure.

It’s a hell of a ride to hold the weight of everything I just mentioned above and take on so much responsibility.

You must be willing to do what most aren’t.

You must be willing to potentially sacrifice the identity you’ve likely held onto for a majority of your life.

You must be willing to feel alone, isolated, and separate from others.

Yet, it’s the most meaningful journey you could ever go on, and nothing will significantly improve your life like this.

But honestly, I’m still on this journey myself, and I have yet to reach the destination, so I don’t even know if what I wrote is entirely true. There’s just a part of me that somehow knows it's the way.

And maybe there’s a part of you that knows that as well.

Are you ready to find out?

Pack your bags, and let’s go.

Catch you on the rocket ship 🚀,

Jay