Dropping the Map!

Have you ever thought, what would it look like if I just let go? What if you stop trying to control the narrative of how life is supposed to work out, and let life meet you? That is a very hard concept for a lot of us. I am part adventurous, the road will take me where I need to go, but my main default is that there must be a plan for life to be successful. Thriving in the adventurous aspect because life rarely follows the carefully laid out plan, but thinking that the detailed plan will provide happiness and safety. This intense planning for safety rarely provides safety, just expectations that can not be met and eventually analysis paralysis. Because the more I plan, the more unfeasible it all seems and then I think maybe this is not the path to be on. Letting the doubts play in an endless loop, stalling progression in any direction.

This year I have been trying a new method to life and to be honest the more I let go, the better things have turned out. I essentially dropped the map that was being clutched to my soul like a life raft. I thought if it could just be mapped out, then there would be peace on the other end. If the path was so clear then moving on from analysis paralysis to action could happen. This is the default, it is so hard for me to put down the map and let what is going to happen, happen. There are constant course corrections as the map is brought back up onto the table and the endless cycle of this path or that starts. Then I think back to what has actually moved me forward this year and it doesn't start with that damn map.

This doesn't mean inaction, knowing that a change needed to happen I had to take a step in any direction. It is interesting because the less I force myself to follow the map the clearer the picture becomes. The more I trust myself to do things, the more action I can take. There is a song that says break the pattern today or the loop repeats tomorrow. I was stuck holding that map for so long, that the loop just kept repeating. By setting the map down, I am breaking that pattern, but I have to set that map down daily and it is a real battle. Some days I can't seem to drop the stupid thing and it wraps me back up in its clutches. My default is and always has been success and achieving which is of the upmost importance to my security and survival, or so my brain seems to think. What I have realized is holding that map to achievement is not the path to being free. I am constantly in flight or fight mode to reach that achievement and it is a trap. Don't get me wrong I love achieving, but if it is what makes me safe it is actually a prison.

So letting go of the map towards achievement and finding out who I am by letting go of what I need to achieve and who I think I need to be leaves room for Charity to start to become who she was born to be. For the first time in a long time I feel me, not what the world expects or the obligation version of me, but actually me creep a little bit to the surface and she surprises me. She is calm in the storm, she feels beautiful and so very foreign. I know if I can keep setting the map down, she will fully rise. I begin to feel like I can trust that version of me, the one that I have shoved so far down to achieve to be safe. I can't wait to meet who I really am when the obligations and expectations both the world and myself has placed on me have been set down. When I feel free to express who I really am, it will be like a phoenix rising from the ashes soaring through the blue sky, dipping between the clouds and feeling the mist in my wings. I know I can't rush this process and I know I have been searching for this woman most of my adult life.

So my challenge for you if you have stuck with me this far, let go if you are holding onto your own map for dear life. Start to trust yourself, set that map down. You harbor the real you, the true you and she is fierce, strong, and capable. In a world that tells us otherwise it is hard to trust ourselves enough to set down the map that society laid out for us promising security if we follow it. We don't have to live in survival, we can be ourselves. The world needs us to set down that map and become who we are supposed to be. Setting down the map (expectations that were never ours to carry) is the first step to freeing ourselves to become. I know how hard it can be, because I still have to fight every urge to hold that map to know where I am in life.

The map that I have clutched for so long has taken me to some beautiful places, it kept me safe when the world felt chaotic. That map saved me as a child and early adult. But I am too old to hold onto it anymore, so I will fight to set down what I needed to survive. I will start to actually trust myself and I can't wait to meet me as I emerge from safety to freedom. Here is to setting the map down and letting go. Trusting that it will all work out, because it always does. Not to be complacent, but to take tiny steps into finding out who you want to be. May your week be filled with tiny moments of awe and big moments of honoring you for you, not the you the world says you need to be!

Always,

Conquering Momma

Charity