What I learned from time spent off-grid
I recently asked a friend how her world was and she said, “I’m spinning too many plates this year. My 2025 is awesome, and giving me just what I asked for, just INTENSE!!! Hoping my 2026 is a relaxing year built on the successes this year brings.”
Oof.
It’s only March. Not even a quarter of the way through the year.
How many of us feel this way though? She’s not the only one.
If my old self had heard this, I would have been judgmental.
I’d shake my head and say “I can’t believe she’s looking forward to next year already.”
Because my old self resembled this way too closely.
My old self could have easily said this same thing.
It’s all good stuff because it’s exactly what I want.
AND… I hope it will someday stop so I can rest more.
Btw, when I say “my old self”, I’m talking about the person I was just a few weeks ago. Not years ago.
I’ll say that again.
I could have easily said this same thing a few weeks ago.
I was getting everything I asked for and it was INTENSE.
Any time someone would ask me how things were going, I’d say, “On a rollercoaster with my hands up.” because that’s what it felt like.
Until I realized that my mental health and my nervous system were jacked up. Until I realized that as much as I had begun to rest over the last 6 months, I was in need of something deeper.
So, I did what I do with every question I have. I sat for multiple days in a row with my morning pages, my meditation, and my daily reading asking myself over and over “what can I do to support me most?” And what I heard was the same each day:
“Sit down and be quiet.”
It wasn’t until a fellow entrepreneur told me that she was deep in a phase of rest for herself and asked if I could cancel or postpone some meetings and take some time to be quiet that I finally took it seriously.
24 hours later I had 5 full days cleared for lift-off.
I turned off my phone and my other devices and disappeared from the internet to find some answers in my personal AI–my Aligned Intuition.
And you know what I found?
That I really needed to cry.
Because I wasn’t running away from discomfort in the form of screens or food or talking to someone else about whatever was coming up, I began feeling what was underneath it all. And I felt EVERYTHING.
I was reading an article in our local magazine about our favorite local CSA farm and began to tear up, so I put the article down, walked outside to our porch couch, laid down, and let the tears flow.
I didn’t question why or what caused it, I just let it out.
This happened over and over throughout the weekend. A feeling would come up and I’d let it through.
I could share a hundred other things that came up, yet what I found most fascinating was that just a few days later, I’d go listen to Michael Singer speak at The Temple of the Universe.
Guess what his topic was the first night?
Let it be.
Yep, from The Beatles.
“Whisper words of wisdom, let it be”
Over and over again Mickey would say, “Stop resisting. Relax. Release. Let it through.”
And what he meant was that instead of pushing away the feeling, pushing away discomfort, we should allow it to come all the way through us and out. When we resist it, it gets stuck in us or just outside of us and will keep coming back. When we stop resisting, it goes through us and releases.
It was such a simple concept, yet so profound.
Suffering is resisting energy.
And everything is just energy.
So, if we stop medicating ourselves with everything that pushes away whatever it is we don’t want to feel, what would happen? We’d feel it and it would go away.
So, if we just sit in the now and feel whatever comes up instead of wishing next year to be here, maybe we’d be able to handle whatever is happening with ease and flow now.
Suffering is optional.
Resisting is optional.
Resting is optional.
Joy is optional.
I choose to rest and feel everything so when I am fully rested I can go further with joy.
What do YOU choose?