When Life Doesn't Feel Like Yours Anymore

What if the life you built is exactly the life you're supposed to have and you're just the one who's gone missing

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from it? Have you ever executed a decision flawlessly?

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The responsible choice, the safe choice, the choice that looked right on paper and still felt strangely absent from your own life afterward.

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If that's familiar, stay with me.

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Today we're talking about the slow drift between a life that looks right and a life that feels like home. The drift

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rarely happens all at once. It happens one reasonable decision at a time until one day the life adds up to something you don't fully recognize.

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High achieving women are especially prone to this because you're so good at executing that you can build an entire

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life on autopilot competence without ever checking whether you actually wanted it.

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Competence isn't the same as choice. You can execute a life flawlessly and still never have asked yourself if it's the

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only one you want. And the body knows the difference. Even when the mind is busy being proud of what it's built,

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a life built from should will always feel borrowed, even when it's objectively good, even when you're the one who built it.

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Which decisions in your life were made from desire, and which were made from obligation, dressed up as responsibility?

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I want to talk about what what's going on right now because

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a lot of things have changed recently and I'm I'm at the precipice of big

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major changes and what I realized is this has been a long time coming. It's

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been doing I've been doing a lot of healing to get here.

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And I was thinking what I was going to talk about today was when I made the decision of my husband and how I was

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just doing what I was supposed to be. I mean, I lived my life the way I was supposed to be. I was supposed to go to college and get married and have 2.3

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kids and the white picket fence and all of that.

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And I never wanted that. It never appealed to me to want that.

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And when my husband asked me to marry him, I know deep down inside being truly honest was I felt like somebody wanted

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me. And that's the decision that I thought. And I loved my husband. Don't get me wrong. I was madly in love with him.

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But I don't think I married him for the reason that I should have married him.

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And the day after my wedding, I knew I made the the wrong decision. I knew that there there was no getting around it.

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And so what I did is I chose to keep that because in my mind I was married for life. That's how I felt about

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things. I'm I'm married for life. I will make the best of it. I will do whatever I have to do. And of course that's not what happened. What ended up happening

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is we ended up getting divorce. He was very jealous, very controlling, very possessive, and it was insanity after a

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while. I just I couldn't deal with it anymore.

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And what I ended up doing is I just started making different decisions. I mean, I wasn't bitter after the divorce.

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I still wanted to keep moving.

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And it was I still knew that I could still be in a relationship, a very long-term relationship. And the things that I always wanted were there. And I

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but I wasn't going to make it happen. It was if it happens, it happens. And if not, it doesn't. But I had to make the different decisions. I had to make and

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become more conscious about the decisions I was making with my life. And that's why the books were so powerful when I look back at it. But the whole

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point of making conscious decisions to live the life that I want and not what society or

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my family decided I should live or what I should do or how I should be because you know that should have I'm was so

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over shoulds in my life that it was I wanted to be that. But see, the thing that really got

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to me the most, and I never shared this with anyone, was I was so afraid

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that I would not not just be shame, but I discovered shame was very much a part of my life. And I didn't realize that until probably a couple of days ago.

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But I was afraid that I would be called crazy if I went down the road that I wanted to go down.

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I've known this my whole life. I had my uncle told me at 17 I had gone into a drug rehab because I was so close to

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death. And he told me how much shame I brought onto the family. And I just remember rearing my head and saying

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something and I was not that person back at 17 years old, but I did it that day and said, "So are you telling me that I

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should have died instead of bringing shame on the family?" I said, "Are you faking kidding me?" [snorts] And I walked away from him

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and never saw him again. And I pretty much walked away from my entire family at that moment in my life. I moved back

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to Florida and I walked away from my family for many, many, many years

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because I couldn't understand how you could say something like that to someone. When I moved into an apartment

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by myself, when I left the the apartments with six women, it was a big deal. I I was dealing with my mental illness, my mental issues because I had

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them. I live with a crazy family. They were neurotic and maybe even psychotic.

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And I dealt with that. And when I was dealing with that, Mother Mary was in the corner of my bedroom

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every single night just holding the space while I processed through what I had to process through. And I thought I got through all of it and moved on with

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my life. However, when I've been asking the questions of what's stopping me, why am I doing this? What what do I need to

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do? What am I not seeing? When you ask different questions, you get different answers.

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And what I ended up seeing and experiencing and feeling was what came back. And I had a friend

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of mine many, many, many, many years ago asked me if I ever dealt with the lifetime when I was crazy.

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And I was like, "Okay." And the moment she said that, I went back into time and I saw her me.

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It was in medieval the dark ages and I lived in the stables because my

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family decided I was crazy and my hair was ratted and I was dirty and I saw the clothes that I wore

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and that's where I lived and I was like doing my best to survive like they would throw food to me and that keep me fed because you know this was all about

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shame and that showed up again yesterday.

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So, a friend reaches out, asks me for help. We go through this and then her partner asks me, he's like, "Kath,

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you're the one that's stopping yourself right now. What's what's stopping you?" I said, "I know exactly what's stopping me." And I told him, and it was about my own fear of thinking I would be crazy.

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And he said, "But that was a label somebody put on." And I said, "Well, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to embrace her."

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So, I had a conversation with her last night and her name was Korinne.

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And she was so angry at how she was treated in that lifetime that that rage

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has stayed with me for many, many, many, many lifetimes. And now it's time to let it go. And what he had said was

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that it was a label. And the label was placed on me by ignorant people.

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I was so spiritually evolved and aware that however I spoke and I thought

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when I first saw her all those years ago, I thought she was like almost like a lunatic kind of person. That's what I

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thought. But when I talked to her last night, that wasn't the case. It was how she spoke. She spoke differently than everyone else. She spoke with knowledge.

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She spoke with awareness and she was treated so poorly because of it. And as I'm listening to her talk to

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me about how she felt, and we we still have a lot more to talk about, believe me, because we just touched on this last

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night when she was talking and telling me cuz I said, "I want to be where you were.

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Not in the crazy place, but I want to be in the place that you were." And she wants to be like where I am. like it's

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okay to be evolved and awake and aware in today's society. So there was there was a meeting of the minds for the two of us

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to bring this home. So what I'm doing now is working on the label because throughout my life when I speak people

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get a little freaked out. They get scared. They wonder what's wrong with me. They think I'm crazy. And I've always taken that on and used that to protect myself, to keep people away.

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And that's not what's happening right now because right now I'm sitting with this because what I did

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is I made a decision to really change out the podcast. I changed the name.

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I've changed a lot of things. I'm focusing more and dialing in more on the podcast side of things than Facebook because I'm really tired of Facebook or

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not Facebook YouTube. There's so much brain damage with YouTube and YouTube's made a lot of changes to itself on

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Monday that I'm grandfathered in. But the whole point is is I'm I'm just so over this. I'm over with struggling. I'm over with what am I not doing?

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And I've been bringing a lot of very unique people, good people, honest people, true people, people that play

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with their heart, that come to the table with their heart and they are genuinely good people that want to see you succeed and not how much money can I extract

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from you. And by noticing all these things has made a big difference for me.

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The other thing that I started when I did this on Sunday when I relaunched everything with the podcast,

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I noticed that I was getting more people asking to come on my shows. I'm like, "Okay, whatever. No big deal." Because I I can go a year out with guests on my

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show. That's how much people want to be on my show. But I didn't stop and read the emails because yesterday was a very busy, crazy day. But when I had this

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conversation about me stopping everything and me dialing in and talking to Karen about it

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and then sitting with it and I started reading some of the emails this morning and I'm like oh my god look at the

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caliber of people that are asking and the cal and what I mean by that is the people coming wanting to come on are medical professionals. I mean, we're

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talking serious credited doctors that are taking the spiritual side of what I say to bring the physical side, the

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science behind what I'm saying, where there's a merging of science and spirituality, which I've always known was going to be coming, but I never

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thought I was going to be the one that starts promoting and bringing something like that in. That's the first big realization that hit. The second one is

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I'm sitting with it and I'm feeling this out inside my nervous system. Now, normally in my nervous system, I would be like, "Crazy. I need a bottle of

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wine. Oh my god, I'm freaking out." I'm not doing that because I spent the last 3 months working on my nervous system,

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allowing whatever the little girl was complaining about or pissing about or whatever she was doing, she just wanted to be heard. And I've allowed her to

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speak. I've allowed her to release. So this part coming in about the insanity, the craziness of me by stepping in

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because my ultimate desire has always been to be that person I have seen. I stand between two worlds. I know that. I've

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always known that. But to have what I want the way I see it, I'm the only one stopping it. And it was because I was

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afraid of being crazy. So now I'm working on putting down the label. I'm making different decisions because see

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I'm at a crossroads. I could sit there and say, "Okay, I can stay in the shoulda place and do what society tells me to do to be a good little girl." Or I

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can say, "Screw you. I'm going to I'm here to do something. I'm going to do it and I'm going to step into who I truly am in my magnificence in the spiritual

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light being that I am as we all are. And I'm making that decision." I have always watched some of the biggest movers and

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shakers on the planet. I've always watched them because I knew they struggled. They talked about their struggle, but there was a defining

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moment that when they got to the core of whatever was stopping them, everything changed. Their whole life changed. And I'm at that precipice right now.

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And I'm not afraid of it. I'm excited about it. I have I'm wearing it. I'm I'm feeling it because what am I doing now?

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I need to reach out to people that have been here so I know how to handle this.

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I need to know what to do next. And it's not that I need to know how to do it.

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It's just that I want guidance because I don't want to sabotage it. I want to be able to do this the way I need to. And I

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know that if I go with the people that have already walked this, they can guide me because I'm sitting here. I'm already making decisions on who are my next

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guests going to be and what's in it for me. And that's not a selfish question.

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It's my show. And what is it in it for me? Because I want this to be a win-win for both parties. This is not a

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one-sided street. The show has never been one-sided. It It might have appeared that way at times, but it never

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was. And so, I'm asking different questions. I'm looking at different ways to do things. I'm thinking about

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different ways of how I can live within this of what do I really want?

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If my life is about to change and I'm going to get on the stages and I'm going to make the money that I want and I'm going to make the impact that I want, what does that look like for me?

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That's a big question, especially when we all remain very small

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and all the people around me have tried to keep me this small and I'm busting out of that smallness and stepping

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into my greatness. And that's what I want. That's what this is about. All the things I've done to achieve my life so I

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can face whatever it is I'm facing. So I can sit there and say, "Look at me. Look at me." Even though I never said, "Look at me.

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There was always that underlying look at me, I am somebody. But see, I didn't think I was somebody to myself. And even

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though I may have known it on some level, I may have understood it on a spiritual level, the whole point was is

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I never really wanted to embrace it because I have always said we are more afraid of our greatness than we of than

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we are of our smallness. And I know that that's what I'm stepping into. It's what I want to step into. And so that's

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why I'm sitting here. I'm actually walking this presentation, this conversation

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right here, right now because I am making different decisions.

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I am stepping into what I want. I am going to wear it and embrace it. And I don't care if it takes me a week or a month or a year.

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I don't think it'll take that long, but I'm going to be here. And since I don't know

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a whole lot of where I'm at or where what could unfold at this moment, I have ideas.

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I'm going to sit and be with what I'm feeling right now. I'm feeling the excitement. I'm feeling And I'm not afraid. That's the thing. I'm not afraid.

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I'm I'm feeling excited of like, wow, I've got the whole world before me and what do I want?

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What do I want?

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And I'm am being with that and I'm sitting with it and I'm excited about it. And those are the same questions

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that I'm going to ask you. What is that you want? Because right now what I want to do is I want you to take out a piece

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of paper and list five decisions currently shaping your life. It could be your home. It could be your work.

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It could be whatever commitments that you've made. It could be relationships.

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It can be whatever it is that is shaping your life at this particular moment.

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And then next to each one, I want you to write want or should.

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And be honest, not diplomatic.

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For each one you mark should, ask yourself, is this still the trade I want to make?

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Not with judgment. with honesty.

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And that's what I'm doing right now.

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That's partly what I'm doing when I put this together. And I put this together what Sunday I think. I think I wrote

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this out on Friday. And Sunday I started putting all the slides and everything together. And I just sat there and thought

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it didn't mean anything to me at that moment. And yet here I am walking into it with you.

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That's the difference between what I do and a lot of other people is I'm walking this with you. I may be a a step ahead of you, but you know what?

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We're walking this together. And this is obviously time to move forward.

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And I don't want you to do anything today with it. I just want you to see it with clarity and see it very clearly for what it is. That's what I'm doing. I'm

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writing what do I want versus what should I be doing? Because what society tells me to do and what I want to do are

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two different things. And who says I can't do it? All the great people out there that have done anything have done what they wanted and what their mission was and not what they should have done.

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And that's something to think about, especially in the craziness of our times. It's time for us to stand up. So, what I want you to do now is go ahead

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and close your eyes and put your hand on your heart

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and take in a deep breath and let it all out.

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and bring to mind one part of your life that feels burrowed.

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Just name it silently and you don't have [music] to fix it today.

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Naming it is the first act of reclaiming it.

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And quietly say to yourself, I am allowed to want what I want [music]

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even now, even here.

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This life is mine to choose starting today.

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One more breath in [snorts] and exhale all the way out.

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And when you're ready, open your eyes.

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This is week two of why everything feels empty.

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Next week, I'm going to go even further of why success itself doesn't fix the loneliness underneath it.

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Be sure to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss it and share this with the woman in your life who's quietly wondering whose life she's living. I'm

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going to invite you to come into the light the I am the light sanctuary for a 7-day free trial. And in there you will

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find more of what I teach, the permission slips, various trainings, a

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little bit more about me. There's a lot of information that I put inside the community and it's all yours to just check out for free for seven days. And

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if you like it, I would appreciate it if you join. And if not, there's no hard feelings and I would bless you on your

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way. It's just simply an invitation to come and join me. I'm Kathleen Flanigan and you don't have to carry this alone.