How to break free of limitations...

This past weekend I had the pleasure of taking part in an immersive and surprisingly intensive virtual retreat. An intimate group of us gathered together to gain clarity surrounding our work/life paths, then outline and implement progressive next steps to take along our individual journeys. 

During our first goal-setting exercise, one of the beautiful, brilliant, exceedingly competent women in our group voiced her frustration over the lack of jobs she had been able to find in her city. In her desire to leave her current job, she had looked at local job listings to no avail. “There’s just nothing available for me in [this city].” She declared with an exasperated sigh. 

I felt the slap across my senses that had often preceded my own personal epiphanic moments. 

“There’s just nothing available for me in this city.”

In the spirit of total honesty, that very sentiment had passed through my consciousness more than once over the course of the last few months. Leaving the kinetic, cultured, lovingly-chaotic New York City (where I had been living since college) in order to spend time with my parents in Michigan during this pandemic, had plopped me down into a radically different pace and space for a home base. I had already moved away from the familiarity of this setting once before in my life; I had moved away from the routine of the recognizable in pursuit of my own neoteric personal destiny—one that included a purpose to fulfill, a career to build, a partner and family of my own to cultivate—one that I had envisioned experiencing elsewhere. 

There had been times over the last few months when I had felt displaced, detoured, disconnected from the prospective efficiency of my life’s golden path. Though I had been able to navigate remote progress professionally, there had been moments when I had flirted, exasperatedly, with the notion that in finding the next great love of my life, perhaps there was “just nothing available for me in this city.” 

The moment I had recognized this smart, savvy, successful woman’s words was the moment that I had consciously become aware of the straight-jacketed feeling inextricably interwoven within that train of thought. My inner-self immediately began peppering my new found consciousness with questions:

Did I KNOW every single person in entire state of Michigan? Had I even MET each person in the local city of East Lansing? 

No, I had not. But I knew they existed. 

Within this pool of unmet people, might it be possible to conclude that there could also be unmet opportunities for romance as well...? By the same token, might it be possible that there were jobs available outside the local classifieds, online listings, or even beyond the scope of conventional titles or descriptions through which my new found friend had already searched...?

In each and every moment, there are infinite possibilities for which we can avail ourselves; there are infinite paths that we can take, infinite solutions that we can implement. So often, we accept the limitations of only that which we can see with our physical eyes in front of us. But there is more that exists.  If we find what we seek in this world, then wouldn’t NOW be an incredible time to get clear on what we really want, why we really want it, and what’s most important to us about it...? The more detail we can elucidate with our inner eyes, the more we will know exactly what to look for when we open our physical eyes. The more work we can do to ‘reflect’ on our future fulfilled desire using our five senses—what it will look like, feel like, sound like, smell like and taste like as if it has already happened—the more wholly we will know what to seek. And, more importantly, the more we will be able to recognize it, viscerally, with every aspect of our total selves when we encounter it.

This weekend’s conversation beseeched me the niggling notion that it was time for me to release the limited belief that finding love depended on where I was physically located. It was time for me to get super clear on what it was that I really wanted. It was time for me to look around at the bevy of infinite potential in which I had been unknowingly bathing for days, weeks, months on end.

Perhaps there are areas of your own life in which you have felt the rope of restriction wrap tightly around the expectation of what you desire. Perhaps now is the time to release the noose choking you off from your own infinite potential. You are surrounded by an entire universe of opportunity just waiting to offer itself up to you...and you ABSOLUTELY DESERVE what it has to give. YOU DESERVE IT ALL.