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The Call To Adventure Went To Voicemail · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

• 0:00
  Hello everybody, welcome back to Unlocking the Paradigm Portal.
• 0:03
  My name is Sarah. So last episode we talked about
• 0:07
  the ordinary world, which is stage one of the hero's journey.
• 0:11
  And that is the life that looks great on paper, but it feels a
• 0:15
  bit like wearing a shoe that's a half a size too small.
• 0:18
  You can still walk in it and you can function in it, but you just
• 0:21
  can't quite feel your toes anymore.
• 0:24
  So I left you with a question, What has become too small?
• 0:27
  And if you immediately thought nothing, I'm fine.
• 0:31
  Cool, you're exactly who this episode is for.
• 0:34
  So now we're on to stage 2, the call to adventure.
• 0:37
  And little spoiler alert, the call already came and you sent
• 0:41
  it to voicemail. So in the movies, the call to
• 0:45
  adventure is extremely obvious. I mean, Gandalf literally shows
• 0:49
  up at the front door and a tornado picks up the entire
• 0:53
  house, and then a holographic Princess appears in the living
• 0:58
  room asking for help. So it's all very cinematic, and
• 1:02
  it's very clear. However, it's very, very
• 1:04
  unhelpful because it sets this expectation that the call is
• 1:08
  going to be unmistakable and that one day the universe is
• 1:11
  going to tap you on the shoulder with a flashing neon sign that
• 1:14
  says this way, and you'll finally have permission to move.
• 1:19
  And I need to be honest with you, that's not how it works.
• 1:23
  That's almost never how it works.
• 1:25
  And if you're waiting for that, you will wait a very long time
• 1:29
  while the actual call sits in your voicemail getting
• 1:32
  increasingly passive aggressive. So the call to adventure is the
• 1:36
  first real crack in the ordinary world.
• 1:38
  So it's the moment that something true breaks through
• 1:41
  the managed surface of your life.
• 1:44
  Not necessarily something dramatic and not necessarily
• 1:48
  something big, although it could be big and it could be dramatic.
• 1:51
  It's usually just something that can't be unfelt.
• 1:54
  Once you've felt it. It's not the decision to go that
• 1:58
  will come later. The call right now is just the
• 2:02
  disruption. It's the knowing, the moment the
• 2:05
  question you've been asking rhetorically for years suddenly
• 2:08
  stops being rhetorical. So if it's not a tornado, what
• 2:13
  is it? You're probably wondering,
• 2:15
  right? Sometimes it's a conversation.
• 2:18
  Maybe somebody says something and maybe not even to you and
• 2:22
  maybe not even something important honestly.
• 2:24
  And it could be like a three-year old that has zero
• 2:26
  filter and just busts out with a really brutally honest
• 2:31
  recognition of something and it lands in a place it wasn't
• 2:35
  supposed to reach. And now you can't stop thinking
• 2:38
  about it and it's Tuesday and you're fine.
• 2:42
  Except you've replayed that sentence 47 times.
• 2:47
  Sometimes it's a loss. Something ends, whether it's a
• 2:50
  relationship, a job, a chapter in your life, whatever it may
• 2:53
  be. And in the space where the grief
• 2:56
  should be, you find something you didn't expect.
• 2:59
  The grief is there, but it's paired up with relief.
• 3:03
  And the relief scares you more than the loss did.
• 3:05
  Because what kind of person feels relieved?
• 3:08
  Frankly, the honest kind. And sometimes it's a body thing.
• 3:13
  Maybe it's a health scare or a diagnosis.
• 3:16
  It's your body tapping you on the shoulder and saying
• 3:19
  sometimes politely, sometimes not so much, hey this is not
• 3:23
  sustainable and I've been sending you memos about this for
• 3:25
  a year and you have not responded to a single one so I'm
• 3:28
  going to knock you on your ass. I personally have had this
• 3:32
  happen to me a few times and sometimes it's a book or a
• 3:36
  podcast or ATV show and or maybe like a single sentence that
• 3:42
  someone writes that cracks you open in the middle of the day
• 3:46
  and you have to go sit in your car for 10 minutes before you
• 3:48
  can go back inside. And sometimes it's just a little
• 3:54
  voice inside of your head that is your inner knowing being
• 3:58
  like, what are we doing? What are we doing?
• 4:01
  And you've learned to tune that out.
• 4:04
  And frankly, most of the time, it's not one moment at all.
• 4:08
  It's a slow accumulation. It's a pile of evidence your
• 4:11
  body has been quietly collecting while your mind was busy keeping
• 4:14
  the plates spinning. And then one day, the pile gets
• 4:17
  really, really high. Like high enough that you trip
• 4:20
  over it and you can't pretend it's not there anymore because
• 4:23
  you are face down in it. So here's what they all have in
• 4:27
  common. Once you've felt it, you cannot
• 4:29
  unfeel it. You can ignore it.
• 4:31
  You can argue with it and you can bury it under all the
• 4:35
  responsibilities and obligations and busyness and and meal prep
• 4:40
  and other people's needs, all the things, but it doesn't go
• 4:43
  away. It just gets louder and
• 4:45
  eventually it'll stop leaving voicemails and it'll start
• 4:48
  banging on the front door. So here's where it gets
• 4:52
  inconvenient. The call almost never feels like
• 4:55
  an invitation. It feels like a problem and it
• 4:59
  feels like something is wrong with you.
• 5:01
  And when the knowing breaks through, when the restlessness
• 5:04
  starts to surface, think all the nights that you struggle to
• 5:07
  sleep. Think all the swirling thoughts,
• 5:10
  all the anxiety. The first instinct is not to
• 5:14
  follow it. The first instinct is to manage
• 5:17
  it or explain it away. Maybe you file it under I'm
• 5:20
  having a bad week or God damn hormones, or the one that most
• 5:26
  people do is I just need a vacation.
• 5:28
  And the number of actual life altering callings that have been
• 5:31
  reclassified as a need for a long weekend is honestly
• 5:35
  staggering. And that's not because you're
• 5:38
  weak or avoidant. That's the ordinary world doing
• 5:41
  its job. Because the ordinary world has
• 5:44
  gravity and it has momentum and it has a really, really kick ass
• 5:49
  compelling PR team. And that PR team has 1000
• 5:53
  perfectly reasonable arguments for why now is not the time.
• 5:57
  Maybe you're telling yourself the kids are young.
• 5:59
  Too young. Maybe the money isn't there, or
• 6:02
  people are counting on you, or there's just so much going on
• 6:06
  it's just a bad time. Or you should be grateful for
• 6:10
  what you have. Or if that little voice in your
• 6:12
  head is super mean, maybe you're thinking, who do you think you
• 6:16
  are? And here's the thing.
• 6:18
  Some of those might be true. They might genuinely be true.
• 6:21
  But they're also the walls of the ordinary world, wearing a
• 6:24
  very convincing wisdom costume. So the call doesn't ask you to
• 6:29
  be reckless, and it doesn't ask you to torch your life.
• 6:32
  It doesn't even ask you to act, at least not yet.
• 6:36
  It only asks one thing. Stop pretending you didn't hear
• 6:41
  it. Take the blinders off.
• 6:44
  That's it. That's the entire ask at this
• 6:47
  stage. Just stop pretending.
• 6:48
  I know that's terrifying. You're probably turning this off
• 6:52
  right now because you don't want to hear it.
• 6:54
  That's fine. That's your choice.
• 6:56
  So here's what I want to leave you with.
• 6:59
  Like I said last episode the question was what has become too
• 7:02
  small? Now this episode, the question
• 7:05
  is simpler and a smidge worse. What do you already know?
• 7:13
  And I want you to check in with your body.
• 7:14
  When I said that, what do you already know that you're trying
• 7:18
  not to look at? Not what you think you should
• 7:21
  know, not what would be convenient to know, but what do
• 7:25
  you actually in the honest, quiet, connected self in your
• 7:31
  own body? What do you already know?
• 7:35
  Because there's something you've been circling, a truth that
• 7:39
  keeps showing up no matter how many times you reschedule it, or
• 7:43
  a direction that you keep glancing toward and then looking
• 7:46
  away from like it's an exit, a party, and it's super awkward.
• 7:50
  You don't have to do anything about it yet.
• 7:53
  You don't have to have a plan yet.
• 7:57
  You don't even have to be ready. But I want you to stop looking
• 8:00
  away. I mean, seriously, you've been
• 8:02
  through, I'm sure hell and back. You've done your hard things.
• 8:07
  You can look at this and be real with yourself, just for a
• 8:09
  moment. Let yourself look directly at
• 8:12
  the thing you already know. Let it be real.
• 8:16
  Let it have weight. Don't solve it, don't plan
• 8:20
  around it, and definitely don't shrink it down to something
• 8:23
  manageable. Just let it be what it is
• 8:27
  because the call has already come.
• 8:29
  The question is not whether you heard it.
• 8:31
  You know you heard it. The question is what you're
• 8:34
  going to do with the fact that you did hear it.
• 8:38
  So next episode is stage 3, the refusal of the call, which is,
• 8:42
  and I say this with all the love and compassion I can muster up,
• 8:46
  the stage where most of you are going to feel very, very
• 8:49
  personally attacked because hearing the call is one thing.
• 8:53
  What most of us do next is honestly extremely human and
• 8:57
  extremely predictable. So I'm also going to be
• 9:00
  releasing maybe later tomorrow, I'm not sure the somatic portion
• 9:06
  of this episode. So every week I will be doing an
• 9:09
  episode like this and then I will do a second one.
• 9:12
  That is the somatic practice to connect your body to start
• 9:15
  actually listening to what your body's trying to tell you for
• 9:18
  each of the stages. So that's going to be the
• 9:20
  process for a while. And then as I feel like it, I'll
• 9:23
  throw in little bonus episodes when things kind of catch my
• 9:27
  attention and I feel like talking about them.
• 9:29
  So for now, like share, subscribe, hype, whatever, all
• 9:32
  the stuff just keep showing up, keep growing, keep kicking ass
• 9:36
  and taking names and I will see you in the next one.