For those waiting for life to happen

Doing this leads to miracles

Photo by Helmuts Rudzitis on Unsplash

So many of us dwell in limbo, waiting for life to happen.

We wait to achieve a career goal before letting ourselves relax.

Wait to lose weight before buying new clothes.

Wait to find love or friendship before going out to dinner or a movie, or taking a trip.

We put our lives on hold, thinking they’re not enough, that happiness is somewhere else, that achieving some specific goal is necessary before delighting in what’s already here.

Years go by, and yet we still wait. Repeat the same story.

I’ll be happy when…

But when never comes.

And the longer we wait, the longer we postpone our own happiness and enjoyment, the more this goal builds up in our minds as the missing link to a wonderful life.

We think we’ll stop waiting when whatever we’re waiting for arrives, but I’ve found that when you stop waiting, everything somehow falls into place.

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The past few years while healing with adrenal fatigue, I spent a lot of time waiting.

My energy was low, at times too low to do literally anything all.

I felt sorry for myself, mad at myself, and frustrated that life seemed to be slipping away. Years spent lying on the couch, waiting to get better.

I didn’t think I had any other choice, but to wait.

Only trouble was, waiting did nothing to improve my health.

Eventually I learned waiting didn’t create healing.

I needed to actively participate in my recovery. Deep, intentional rest and restoring activities like yoga nidra, yin, meditation, time spent sitting outside in the sunshine, reading — enjoying and being.

Almost magically, as I stopped waiting and started enjoying and being, my body began to heal.

Energy arose.

An inner light flickered on.

Still, recovery was slow.

One of the most frustrating aspects of my condition was that I never fully knew how much a particular activity would drain my energy.

One time mopping my floor wiped me out for a month. Often I didn’t know how much energy something cost until the next day, making it difficult to pace myself.

These setbacks made me feel helpless. At times I doubted whether I’d heal, and while I tried to understand my condition, as soon as I thought I did, my body would upend my assumptions.

While engaged in the process of recovery, there was still a sense of waiting.

Waiting for my energy to come back.

Waiting for life to seem predictable so I could feel hopeful about my future.

Everything seemed out of my hands.

So I did whatever I do when I feel helpless. I prayed. I asked God, please help me see things differently. Please help me understand how to be grateful in this situation. Please help me find happiness.

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And like always, God showed me the way.

One afternoon, while resting on a loveseat in my backyard, the message came:

You have a peaceful and beautiful life with as much time and space as you need to heal, and that is something to be incredibly grateful for.

The sun shined, the birds chirped, my backyard held me as I healed.

In that moment, I realized how myopic I’d been. Sure, I was tired, but things could be so much worse. Some people spend all day working jobs they hate. (And even if you do work a job you hate, there are still things to be grateful for!)

I didn’t have energy, but at least I had peace. I had the time and resources to cook healthy food and care for myself in the way I needed. I had the unconditional love of my husband and my cuddly dog Kevin Gregory to rest with. I now had the energy to take my sunset walks, do Pilates, and move my body in ways that felt soulful and satisfying.

So what if things didn’t look the way I wanted them to? So what if my dreams were on hold? This was where I was meant to be. This was what I was meant to be doing, because these lessons were the ones I was being called to learn.

I had kept dreaming of all the things I’d do when I got better, taking my focus off all the things I could do right now.

I could listen to interesting podcasts, watch interesting movies about interesting people and live vicariously through them. I could assign myself the classics. (I read Jane Austen novels and honestly don’t understand the appeal. Does that make me a plebeian?)

I had put my life on hold, kept telling myself that I couldn’t be happy until my energy returned.

One day I realized the waiting was blocking me from moving forward, not life conspiring to hold me down, or an unfriendly fate dooming me to suffer.

Once I started living, things started moving, and this wasn’t the first time I’ve experienced this phenomenon.

I met my husband after I stopped waiting to find love.

I discovered my purpose after I stopped waiting to move away from the desert.

And I was guided to Substack after I stopped waiting for the energy to do YouTube.

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Understanding why we wait

Understanding why we do things helps us unwind unhelpful thought, emotional and behavioral patterns.

I believe strategic inner work is our most powerful tool for creating happiness, health and success in the unique way we’re meant to. I say strategic inner work because it’s easy to get trapped in endless, sometimes pointless inward excursions that inevitably lead to blaming everything on our parents or some other painful past event, although they surely play a role.

The truth is, we are more than what’s happened to us. There’s something within us, our own fate with its own design, needing to burst forth, that’s larger and more powerful than anything that happens to us.

The trouble is, we give our power away by focusing on everything we can’t control rather than returning our focus inward and moving forward in the way our instincts guide us.

Focusing on the uncontrollable is beneath you. This is what happens when we wait. You deny your inner genius the opportunity to burst forth, like the flower in cracks of concrete, despite all the odds, lacking all nourishment, but adamant in its need to bloom anyway.

We wait because we think everything will be perfect if we get what we want.

In the days when I waited to start living until we moved to the ocean, I imagined the perfect, beach-side life. I’d have friends, instead of feeling lonely. I’d have a job I loved, instead of feeling lost and uncertain. I’d work out on the beach, maybe surf or play volleyball, even though I didn’t exercise much at the time.

One day I realized that I wanted to move to the ocean so I could be happy. I asked myself: What if I removed the middle man and just let myself be happy anyway?

This is the crux of regret — comparing an ideal vision with our imperfect reality. But real-life alternates are never perfect. We always have problems. Even after restoring my energy and starting work again, new problems arise, just related to different goals.

The limbo state of always waiting, never living, always dreaming of a perfect future that will never come, saves us from taking sometimes difficult, imperfect action amid present, imperfect circumstances.

It may be hard. It may not feel good. But it’s real. It’s here and now, and it’s what will change your life.

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We wait because we believe resisting things will change them.

I truly think we sometimes cling to sadness in the hope that life will feel sorry for us and change, as if the Universe was a parent ready to deliver a lollipop to fix our tears.

But that’s not how life is. Life isn’t easy for anyone. We don’t get what we want because we want it or even deserve it.

I believe in the hands of fate, and I also believe that we can influence our reality through our thoughts, energy and actions.

It sounds crazy that we can change our lives through changing our energy, yet it must be — why else would so many pieces fall into place after giving up the waiting game, instead choosing to come to peace with what is?

Instead of resisting life, we must accept it. Acceptance is what allows us to expand beyond limitation, not wishing things were different.

We wait because we tell ourselves a story that our lives need to look a certain way to feel good enough.

We feel inadequate and believe that if we were better somehow, we’d have what we want. If only we were smarter, more disciplined, focused, courageous, or creative — we’d have what we wanted, and we think the absence of this thing proves we are deficient.

However, focusing on our shortcomings amplifies them. It’s hard to cultivate discipline while obsessing over your lack of self-control. It’s hard to act with courage when you beat yourself up for every little thing. It’s hard to focus when your mind continually drifts to the past or the future, and how things could have been different if you were somehow different.

Our lives aren’t indictments on who we are, they’re reflections. The only ones offering indictment are ourselves.

When we give ourselves grace, acknowledge that we’re humans growing and learning on a path, we gift ourselves room to make better choices.

And as soon as we create that space, miracles happen.

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Exactly how I stopped waiting and started living:

1. Strengthened my spiritual connection
   ​When I feel connected to God and the Universe, everything flows better. My intuition is stronger, guiding me to the next right step, feeling clicked in and following the path that’s true for me.
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   I talk to God, I meditate, I pray, often on walks or while resting, not necessarily in any formal capacity. I do believe there is always supernatural support available to us but because we have free will, we need to ask.
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2. Recognized my blessings​
   Even the most difficult situations have things within them to be grateful for. Nothing is all good or all bad, and taking time to notice the good allows you to capitalize on available opportunities. As you do that, those opportunities multiply.
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3. Developed awareness of my thought patterns​
   We all have patterns of self-pity, victimhood and other negative self-perceptions keeping us trapped in cycles of waiting. Identify and transcend these patterns through journaling. If you want support, I have written a series of self-help books / guided journals to guide you.
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4. Released my need to control outcomes​
   I’ve learned attaching to outcomes stops me from enjoying my life right now while also making it less likely I’ll achieve my goals.
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   This has been a focus of my inner work lately, and I’ve developed a very powerful, effective practice for releasing control of any outcome. Are you interested in learning more? I can write about it next week if you’d like, but want to make sure it's something you want to read.
   

Thank you for reading!

Would love to hear your experiences in the comments:

• What’s something you’ve waited for?

• Have you experienced a time when you stopped waiting for something and either received it or realized you were okay without it?

• What’s something you’re grateful for, if you’re in a season of waiting?

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Love you all so much,

Suzanne