Latest / The MysticWithin Podcast / Ep. 3: Timelines, Comparisons & Other Useless Things (Why The Best Path Is Your Own)
Transcript
- Vanessa: Give me 10 seconds and I'll predict how the last week of your life has looked. Monday. Open Instagram. An old coworker is posting on their month-long Japan trip. Tuesday hits, boom. Another high school friend just got engaged. Wednesday to Thursday, 12 new LinkedIn notifications. 30,000 people you know just became the CEO at their new job. Friday, Saturday, well, that's the Pilates picks, the matcha lattes. Q baby showers at the wineries. And Sunday, well, Sunday is for the goddamn farmer's market. Now you are panic scrolling on hinge, trying to find your soulmate. You're looking at very cheap, sketchy flights to Japan, and you're looking into really niche master's programs. Most of all, you're just super confused about what you even need to be doing or where you should be or w what's going on. We live in a world that is profiting off of us wanting more or wanting different. We need to be traveling more. We need to be making more money. We need to be building an empire. We need to be working out more. We need to be doing anything that you aren't doing. And the list truly goes on. Not only are we being asked for more, but we're being pressured by what other people are even doing. You're seeing everyone get married and have children, which is something you didn't really ever want. But now you have a Pinterest board called special day and you're looking up future baby names for a fake child. The noise of comparison and all these timelines is stripping away the individual and special journey that you should be walking, Comparing yourself to others is a hundred percent a guarantee that you will miss out on the life that you are meant to live. We can't hear what our intuition, our inner voice is guiding us towards if we just keep looking outside of ourselves for cues. Cues on where to be, cues on what to be doing, cues on what to wear, cues on what foods to eat. I can't even with the cues. Today we are talking about how comparing yourself is killing your connection to your intuition. How all these societal timelines are truly just an illusion. And how we can put self-trust back into the driver's seat. I am Vanessa and this is the Mystic Within Podcast, a podcast designed for women reconnecting with their power, their purpose, and their intuition. One honest conversation at a time. I don't know about you, but I am completely exhausted from this constant exposure to a better life. I am tired. I used to have this fantasy of just going to like a body of water and just throwing my phone in and never looking back. I feel like that is the most freeing and peaceful thing I could have ever believed. At the cost of sounding super old, social media is the problem. I think it's time to come to terms with that. Every day seems like a ritual of comparison. And it is harming something intrinsic within us, Our inner voice is starting to sound like captions on Instagram or what would sound good on social media. And that's really sad. It's messing with the program of a natural-based life, making a life. That is purely yours outside of the noise. This is leading me into point one. We cannot hear our intuition when we are comparing ourselves. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. Your intuition is never going to speak out of a place of panic. It's never gonna feel like it's forcing you to do something. That is not intuition. It's actually the opposite of it. When you are listening to your intuition, or your intuition has a message for you, it's gonna feel calm. You might not understand the message immediately, I always describe it as gears slowly turning together. There's nothing forced, there's nothing scary, there's nothing that. Is forcing you and springing you into action. It's not a panicked feeling. So when we look outside of ourselves and we feel panic, that's actually just fear, which is like intuition's evil stepsister. Intuition feels like this, okay? You're walking out of the house and you're looking at the umbrella at the side of the door, and you're kind of like, Well, it's sunny out, I don't really need it. And something inside says, Bring it. You don't really know why. So you end up bringing it, whatever. Two hours later, it just unexpectedly starts to downpour. Your intuition knew something, right? Your intuition was telling you something. And now you have an umbrella. You might not really even love everything your intuition is sharing with you, but you're never going to feel panicked by it. There is a calmness that is embedded in intuition. When we compare ourselves to others, that means we are outside of ourselves. We can't possibly begin to hear that inner truth if we're distracted by the noise of what's happening outside of ourselves. That inner voice is never ever going to steer you wrong. That's why it's so important that we are connected to it. We're listening actively to it. We need to trust that over our emotions and feelings in accordance to what other people are doing. I want you to ask yourself one thing as you listen to the rest of this podcast. If you didn't have watchful eyes, judgment externally or internally, if you didn't have social media, what kind of life would you be living? If you didn't have the external pressures, expectations, responsibilities, if you were detached from all of that, what life would you be leading? And I want you to think: if that person is so radically different than who you are right now, why? The version you're imagining is a version of you that is free. There is a freedom in abandoning those attachments to what people think, say, feel about how you live your life. When you step into an authentic life. You have to cut the cord between that expectation. Whether you understand or not, your intuition is your power. It's such an underrated thing, especially for women. Women are very intuitive beings, yet we often get told to abandon our intuition. And that's, I guess, that's what I'm doing here. I'm trying to realign women with the most powerful part of them. There's never going to be something more true or something you can fall back into than your own intuition, than your own trust in yourself, that connection to something higher, communicating literally through you. Our intuition is our power. It's a roadmap to this extraordinary existence that we are meant to live. Looking at other people's timelines and comparing isn't going to do anything for you. That's where they are. That's what their, we can assume their intuition is guiding them towards. We don't know. More on that later. We are all meant to live a very unique journey, different lessons, different wins, different gifts. How are we supposed to step into that if you're looking at Becky down the block? Becky down the block has her own gifts and journey to walk. You can't copy and paste someone's journey onto your own. When you compare yourself and compare your timeline to others, you actively give away that power. When you compare, you are abandoning your life and handing over your power. The version of you that is living authentically, fully, cannot come into fruition. If you are in a cycle where you're making decisions and moving in accordance to what everyone else is doing, that's boring. Okay. That's not fun. That's not how you build a life that's has all these wonderful stories and you're on your deathbed bragging about everything you've done. That's the one time you can do that actively. When you choose to live presently, that means you make movements based on what you are experiencing right now, not what you're worried about in the past, not what you're anxious about for the future. You stop looking for cues on how you should behave, how you should be living. what you should be doing, what you shouldn't be doing, where you should be. You all of those things become silenced when you are tapped into something that is guiding you deeper. Life is meant to be unclear. the whole gig is we don't know what's going on. We don't know what is next. Living presently is how you make your life up. You can't live in the future and make your life up there, and you certainly can't go in the past and change anything. Do you see what I'm getting at? Like, we need to be here in order to build the blocks that it's gonna make whatever is gonna happen. And we use our past experiences to move accordingly in the present moment. Is that making sense? We aren't really supposed to see the future. This gets me into point two. If your whole future is planned out, you're probably living someone else's life. There's only two things I can guarantee in this life. You're gonna die, and things are gonna change. I I really need that to click. The universe has a funny way of humbling us. Let's start there. Have you ever heard the quote, you make a plan and God laughs? Yeah, that's pretty accurate. You can't plan anything. You can have goals and work towards it in the present moment, but like guaranteeing one thing is gonna happen, like we don't know. And usually the universe watches us arrogantly plan everything to a T and then Starts giggling. They start giggling because then a massive, unavoidable change is about to come. That's going to shape you into being a better person, better version of yourself. But it's usually unexpected change. It's going to teach you something. It's going to lead you into a new way of life. It's not originally what you planned for, but you're going to come out the other side better. But we can't. Plan things. It's not the makeup of this universe. Part of life is being redirected. Especially if you're 20-something. 20-something, if it's taught me anything, is you just gotta take hands off the steering wheel sometimes and just trust that whatever's happening is happening for the greater good. And that's it. Our plan seems to go to shit. And then all of a sudden we end up somewhere we never thought we could be. And we're like, well, thank God that happened actually, because it's taught me this. It's guided me here. It's shown me this person. I got to meet this person. I got to love this person. Life opens its possibilities and all these paths, depending on how open you are. How open you are to change. It's like you can either go willingly or not. You're either gonna figure it out on your own, or the universe is going to assist you in getting there. Sometimes other people's expectations is a huge influence on how we decide to live our lives. Maybe, for example, you want to be a coffee shop owner and your parents are pressuring you into becoming a lawyer. Those are totally two different dreams and two different things. Those pressures are challenging and definitely hard, especially if you've grown up people pleasing. But you also have to make a radical and conscious decision at that point. If you decide to Succumb to the pressures. Are you okay living a life that you don't want to? Could you bear living inauthentically every day for the next eighty years? When you are on your deathbed, are you gonna look back and think, why didn't I choose myself? When we are in these moments of pressure, we can't always make the best and most aligned decisions. And that feels permanent. It feels like we don't have a grasp on our life. We don't have control over what can and cannot happen, what we are expected to do versus what we want to do. And sometimes that is a balancing act. There are so many circumstances where there's a sense of responsibility. To accomplish certain things that maybe you don't want to. But again, we need to take a step back into clarity. Sometimes the answer is not going forward yet. It's taking a moment to retreat back into yourself and ask those questions. What would it feel like to live a life that is completely outside of my desires? How I want to live, who I want to be. At the end of the day, and this is a privileged statement, yet true, the best guide to remind yourself that this is your life. Is that this is your life and you have the ability to make choices that suit what you want, suit what you are meant to do. And that power is within you. It is always available to you. There's never going to be a time where that's lost. So no matter what you decide or choose for your life, I want you to always remember that you have the ability to change at any point. This whole episode's about how timelines don't matter, If you have decided, yep, I'm living the life that I want, then you need to shift into a mindset that expectations are void on the road to get what you want. People's voices don't matter. People's people's expectations of you can't matter. Because if you have clarity in where you're going, then that's the only thing that matters. It doesn't have to make sense to other people. Who cares what other people think? You need to care what life you're living. I'm not saying the people in your life, parents, friends, partners, whatever, are like evil villains for wanting the best for you. That's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the external voices that influence your decisions over. What you want. Those voices are stronger, perhaps. But only you know where you're meant to be. And it doesn't have to make sense to everyone. It only has to feel right to you. Point three. I love this point. Listening to other people's expectations and comparing yourself is completely useless. No one knows what they're doing. People are just people, and we shouldn't put anybody except ourselves onto a pedestal. I'm talking to women here. No one wins at this game. We all go through this unique experience and then we die. And no one's come back to tell the tale. This is everyone's first rodeo. And who is anyone to say where we are meant to be in our lives or not? Who made those rules? What metrics are being used exactly to determine what timeline we should be on? I'm speaking to people who are trying really hard in life and feeling like they're falling short or they're paralyzed and feel like now they're not doing anything and they're behind. I have one word, illusion. Timelines are an illusion, guys. We made these up. We we literally made them up. They're mostly revolving around consumerism and capitalism, but that's another conversation for another day. We made the timelines up of when people should be getting married. Someone should be at the tip top of their career. When you should be going to school. They are fiction. They're quite literally imaginary. I don't know why they hold such influence, but if you're not at a certain place on this imaginary timeline that automatically means things for your character. Huh? We feel so ashamed of ourselves when we don't hit these markers. There's an expectation that at certain ages we should be doing certain things. And if you're not right there with everybody else, then you're worthless. You're never gonna succeed. You're never gonna have a family. You're never gonna have friends, you're never gonna be happy. Guys, it sounds insane as I'm saying it. Like just because Becky down the block is getting her master's, like now you gotta get one? What if Becky down the block's looking at you run your business, wanting to run her own business too? Comparing yourself to others assumes that the other person is happy or happier than you. It's the assumption that the grass is greener. We don't know that. We don't know that. What if that person's going against their intuition too and completely outside of themselves? Right. That's why everyone needs to jump back into their bodies in their own life so we can look around and be inspired by other people, not copy and paste what other people are doing because we think it's right. We don't know what's happening in strangers' lives. why are we making decisions for our lives based off strangers and what we think is best? These people are strangers mostly that we're comparing ourselves to. That is exactly why we shouldn't be caring about what other people have to say about our journey. You don't know me. I don't know you. Sometimes it's self-inflicted. We feel shame based off what other people are doing, but that person's not looking at us, looking differently at us. That's all you. So it's like, why are we shaming ourselves into feeling bad about where we are in life? By this point, now we're understanding we have the power to change. We have the power to shift and pivot at any point. Failure is not a bad thing. You need courage to live your dream life. If you don't like something in your life or you're looking somewhere else, being like, shoot, I should be there, okay. Pedal to the metal on that. Figure it out and work towards it. Who cares if you're 30 years old? You're single with no desire to date, but now you're having all these conversations with people about children. You're scared and pressured about this biological clock. And now you're just confused and panicked about where to go. There are so many ways to have children without a partner. It will happen just the way it's meant to with the child you are meant to have. Giving yourself space to walk the path you are meant to take, not some made-up illusion about what you need to be doing, according to everyone else, is the freedom that your soul needs to make up the life that it wants to live. Or you're 24 and it's taken you years to finish your undergrad program. You feel totally behind. You feel like a loser. Who cares? That's life and it happens. Time passes. How exactly does that impact your character? It doesn't. You're just someone who took longer to do something. What does that matter? Some people finish in one year because they're geniuses. Or maybe you're a genius who went through a hard time and needed more time. I don't know. Exactly, I don't know. I'm a stranger. That's when you have the chance to prove something to yourself, not other people. You buck down and do what you gotta do in order to finish. And then you move it forward. That's it. That's life. Who cares what other people think? Success is so objective. who is more successful? The doctor who saves lives and works really hard, or the person who has a million travel stories and they've met hundreds of interesting people. It feels very relative to me. what does success mean? Is it money? Is it status? Like, is it authority? what is it? And who exactly is the judge of it? These are questions I want you to begin asking yourself when you begin doubting your life or your power or where you want to be versus where you are. Who made the system up and why are we blindly following it? Why does it hold value? That alone is liberating when you start to challenge what you've been told and reclaim your identity as an individual, living a specialized journey. Everything is personalized in this world to you. It's time to return back into your life and work from the inside out. And this brings me to my final point. Self trust is the liberator of the comparison shackles. This will probably eventually be another whole episode topic, but the things that we tend to worry about can be solved when we come back into the present moment. Mostly because that's the only thing we actually have power over. Right here, right now. Being present means We're not thinking about past failures or future worries. We're only concerned about what is right in front of us. It's a waste of time to think about anything else, truthfully. And our energy is so precious and sacred. I'm going to expose myself right now, and I'm going to give you a little tip. You can customize it to your own preference. But this is a mini lesson in how to be more present right now. Or when you're going through really anxious thoughts, thoughts that take you out of the present moment. This is what you can do and it will instantly get you back into your body. When I am going through doubts, future thinking that scares me, anxiety, ruminating thoughts, anything that takes me out of the present moment and makes me feel panicked and scared, there's one line that gets me back to myself. I audibly say, I need you back at headquarters. I need you back at headquarters. It reminds me of like inside out, that animated movie. And that's exactly what I picture. But it's little me running back. Guys, it works. It works. I literally say that to myself. I need you back at headquarters. Girl, get back to headquarters. I can't live my life if I'm living in these fearful thoughts. I can't hear what I need to hear and make decisions based off that if I'm outside of myself, if I'm constantly scared, if I feel anxious, if I'm allowing those things to control me, that means I'm not, I'm not at my core. I'm not in my power. I'm giving it away. I visualize myself literally coming back into myself. My headquarters is a symbolic place inside of me where I can take grounded action. It is a safe space within me. It grounds my thoughts. And I'm able to make decisions that are aligned with what I want and aligned with who I am. Having the awareness and power to return back into that safe, grounded space within yourself is how you're going to kill the comparison loop. All you need for that exercise is to be conscious of the thoughts that are forcing you out of yourself. If you keep thinking about what Becky's doing or not, you need to get your ass back to headquarters. It's vital for your energy and your life. To be able to come back into the present moment. It's natural to not always live in the present. We're human, it's part of the human experience, but you need to start thinking of it every time you are outside of yourself or allow yourself to be in a spiral of thoughts. It's an act of treason to constantly compare yourself. You're giving up your power. You betray your soul, your spirit when you do so. And you're not trusting your path forward. Self-trust is the only way you are going to be able to live an authentic life. You need to be able to look at yourself and say, I'm capable and I know where I'm going. I might not know how, I might not know when, but I know what I want and I'm gonna get there. I know the energy I want to bring into a space. I trust that I'm evolving into the person and having that ability to do so. You have to be rock solid in who you are. Then you can show up in all types of aligned ways. If you don't have a good grasp on your identity, who you are, what you stand for, it's not rock solid to you. It is now your job to get to know that person inside. Explore yourself. What did that highest version, the freest version of yourself show up as? What did they feel like in that vision? That's what you do. Now you start building out of that safe space within you, That safe space is a sacred space that you need to protect. It's somewhere you can return every time you feel timeline panic, There is something sacred about trusting yourself, especially as a woman. That is the truest way to re-engage with your energy, with your power. Start from within. You have to connect with something deeper, something internal. You're never gonna find solidity externally. You're never going to find your power outside of yourself, or at least power that is worth keeping or sustainable. You can buy all the things, post all the things, come across whatever way you want, but there's going to become a day where. You look around and you don't identify with this made-up character. That's not authentic. It's not the real you. Connecting to something internal is deeper and stronger than any trend, anything you see outside of yourself, anything you envy, there is something truly, truly sacred about that. Looking outside yourself is doing you and your highest version of yourself a disservice, and it's keeping you in a limitless loop. the essence of this episode is truly about freedom. Freedom from the pressure of living a life that really is not for you and you know it. It's a reminder that the truest and best form of guidance for yourself is within. And you should always be able to return to that core existence to redirect you or realign you with where you need to be going. It's not the timelines externally or what everyone else is doing that should be giving you. your sense of stability. It comes from within. And it takes courage to live a life that feels true to you. We don't speak about how courageous you need to be to live authentically. That courage inspires other people to show up how they need to show up. It gives people hope. And right now we need hope. It creates a sense of community when you are around other people who are unapologetically themselves. And truly, it is inspiring to watch someone walk in their own path. It is not always easy. Again, we are designed in a world that is meant to keep us in this spiral because, well, it it sells. It won't always make sense to other people. But the most freeing thought is that it doesn't have to. If you believe it's for you, then it is. And that's the only evidence and proof that you need. That is your truth. That is the payoff of following your inner voice. You get to live a life that is for you and uniquely for you. No two lives are built the same, designed the same, lived the same. You walk a path that's illuminated through Your individual and unique power, you make a life that is worth living, the life you individually are meant to live. Sometimes the only transportation to that version of yourself is a leap of faith and undeniable trust in yourself. If you are interested in going deeper into your power, or you need support through your journey there, look into my 12-week one-on-one spirit coaching program, Returning Within. A sacred, connected program designed specifically for you to clear the voice of limiting beliefs. Root yourself in your own truth and authenticity and completely anchor yourself into your bountiful power. To apply and book for your one-on-one free discovery call click the very first link in the show notes below. It's also in my Instagram bio. It's gonna take you to a calendar. You can choose what day works for you. You're gonna share a little piece of your story with me, and that's it. If you or someone you love might be interested in that, Give it a shot. Thank you so much for spending some time with me again today. And thank you so much for the support on the first two episodes. I truly love everyone who's listening and the support. And now they're up on YouTube, which is pretty freaking exciting. So if you want to see my face, not just hear this lovely voice, I'm on there too. Again, go leave a review. share with someone who would appreciate this episode. Until next Wednesday, have an amazing week. I love you. And bye for now.