Good Shift - How Creative Allowance Changes the Way You Plan - E215

0:00Kitchen and bathroom professionals know what goes behind the tile matters. That's why TradePros trust Fiber cement party backer board to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking, and help block moisture. Chosen in over 40 million kitchen's and bathrooms, party backer board, what the best build on. Shop now at participating Home Depot, Lowe's, and floor into core stores. For more information, visit JamesHearty.com slash HeartyBacker. Hey everybody, this is part of our new series called Good Shift on the Makesense with Dr. JC Podcast, where we take one of our favorite blogs from the Makesense substack and bring it to you live right here. I sure hope that you'll enjoy this because this is some good shift. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleep walking mode and label

1:04it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Makesense with Dr. JC Podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shot caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up. Let's rise up and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. This is some good shift. So I was recently asked a few questions about the people that I create content for and the voice that I create it from. Questions were simple enough. Who are you creating content for? What are they looking for? And what is the difference about your voice? But as I answered, I realized that sometimes the questions that someone asks seem to have this weird way of becoming the questions that we've been waiting to ask ourselves make sense. So I came to this

2:08conclusion, my intended audience are what we call sense makers. They range from their 20s to their 80s, though many of them seem to be women that are standing at some kind of a crossroads in their life. They may be reinventing themselves or trying to reestablish a foundation beneath an identity that just seems to no longer feel quite right for them. They may have reached a point where the life that they have been living no longer feels like the life that they are consciously choosing. Something in them is stirring and they're becoming willing to look again. They're what I call seekers of the earth. They want to be happier, healthier and wealthier, just like you. It's not because they believe that life is a problem that you can solve once and for all. They're seekers because they're beginning to notice the invisible forces that keep pulling them away from what they say it is that they want. They're noticing the autonomic nervous system, the inherited operating system, and the old perceptions and reflexes that have been making sense of the world and calling all

3:12of the shots while at the same time they're busy trying to just keep up. These sense makers are becoming open and curious to the possibility that there may be another way to see things. They're open and curious about what else might be true. They're moving towards the place where they can feel more at home with just being themselves. And perhaps that is what it is that I am doing as well. Perhaps the content that I create is not me standing outside of the experience with all of the answers like I'm some sort of guru because I'm not. Maybe instead it's me standing inside of the experience with them looking at something from another angle and saying, have a look at this. Does this feel familiar? What else might be true? When I was asked what makes my voice different, I said that I believe that I offer alternative perspectives to people. Through my content, I try to give people the opportunity to change the way that they're looking at things so that naturally the things that they look at can begin to change if that's what they want. I have completely let go of the need

4:17to be right and I have let go of the need to know everything. My voice is interested only in bringing people back to the precious present moment where life is always taking place and moving on while so many of us live in the past or prepare for a future that is not yet arrived. People sometimes experience my voice as fearless, which I kind of get a laugh at because the truth is that what may sound like fearlessness is often me just not needing to know everything before I move forward. I don't always know what is going to happen or what the right answer is. I'm simply becoming more willing to remain open and curious inside of the uncertainty. I also see myself as 100% willing to be wrong and find better insights and solution through others. Right now at this phase of my life, I'm agile and I don't really care to be the one who has all the answers. I'm more interested in the answers than being the guy that has the answers. When it's time to scale your business,

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6:24trust fiber cement party backer board to keep tile firmly in place, resist cracking, and help block moisture. Chosen in over 40 million kitchens and bathrooms, party backer board, what the best build on. Shop now at participating home depot, lows, and floor into core stores. For more information, visit jameshardy.com slash hardy backer. Make sense? And maybe this is where this piece begins on the topic of allowance. There seems to be a way of living where we are constantly trying to make life happen our way. We set the schedule, form the plan, and picture the outcome. We work the angles and try to control all the people involved and the circumstances, the timing, and sometimes even the feelings that we have along the way. We can spend so much energy arranging life that we actually forget to actually experience it. And then there's another way, a way to let life happen. And I don't mean becoming passive or abandoning your goals, preferences, creativity, or your ability to choose. There's a sweet

7:29spot here. And I think that it could be one of the most important spaces that all of us can learn to live in. We can set goals and still allow. We can be selective and still allow. We can create, prepare, act, and participate fully and still allow the natural, unpredictable process of life to have the final say. We can bring our attention, our attention, and our effort without demanding that reality deliver the exact result that we had imagined when we began. This is not always easy as you can imagine. We want to believe that if we think clearly enough, work hard enough, plan carefully enough, and make all the right choices that we can protect ourselves from disappointment. We may even begin to believe that an unexpected result means that we fail, or that a change in direction means that something has just gone wrong. But what if life isn't always asking us to hold on tighter to things? What if it is sometimes asking us to participate without insisting on controlling

8:35it? To loosen our grip on certainty and welcome uncertainty. And curiosity, I can choose the direction, but I can't command every condition. I can plant the seed, but I can't force things like weather and the growth. I can prepare myself for the opportunity, but I cannot decide exactly when it will arrive or what form it will take. I can love someone, support someone, and speak honestly, but I cannot live their life for them. And I can do my part, but I cannot demand that life complete the story according to my instructions. Allowance is the willingness to let the cards fall as they may without immediately deciding that the cards are wrong. It's the ability to meet change without treating it as a personal betrayal. And the capacity to say, this is not what I expected without automatically adding, and therefore this should not be happening. Perhaps allowance is not giving up control. Maybe instead, it's giving up the illusion that we ever had control in the first place.

9:41Or recognizing that life has always been participating in the process, even when we're convinced that we were the ones making everything happen. Instead, the question may be whether we can learn to act with intention while remaining available to what life reveals. I wonder how much energy we actually spend trying to make life prove our original plan was correct. Or what might be available if we stopped confusing certainty with safety. Maybe the present moment often feels so uncomfortable because it is not yet agreed to become the unknown future that we had imagined. These are not questions that I've answered. These are questions that I'm currently sitting with. Maybe that is the invitation for you as well. Not to stop wanting what it is that you want or surrender your creativity and ambition, but instead to stop accepting every circumstance without question and notice where your desire for your particular outcome has become a demand that life obey you before you

10:43allow yourself to be at peace. Where are you trying to make life happen your way? Or gripping an outcome? Can you see yourself thinking that a particular person, timing, opportunity, or version of yourself must appear before you can relax? And where might you start to practice allowance as a radical acceptance of reality's right to participate rather than thinking reality solely works for you? Allow the cards to fall as they may sometimes then look at the cards, not as proof that you won or lost, but just simply as information or as an invitation that life keeps revealing itself. Hmm, maybe the life that you've been trying so hard to make happen is not the only life available to you. In fact, maybe another one is just simply waiting to be allowed. Make sense? That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Podcasts, be sure to subscribe, like, and share, as well as follow the Make Sense sub-step for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember,

11:50learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time.