Embracing the Leap: Navigating Life's Cliffs
“If your friend jumped off a cliff, would you follow her?”
Most of us have either uttered those words or heard them ourselves. In general, it’s not wise to jump off a cliff! However, in this journey of conscious living, our inner guidance often nudges us to do just that – and it’s always scary.
About fourteen years ago, I faced one of those cliffs at the most inconvenient time. From a very young age, I worked. My earliest paid job was in elementary school. I was paid a penny a brick for chiseling mortar off bricks and stacking them on pallets to be recycled. Social Security thinks my first paid job was working at the Arctic Circle Drive-Through when I was 15, but I’d had quite a few jobs by that time. I had always worked until the Loving Life Force led me to a cliff and asked me to quit a job without having another one lined up.
The job I left was my ‘dream job’ until it became clear that my ‘dream job’ was much more of a nightmare than any dream.
I found myself wondering how I could have been so wrong about that job when I had wanted it for so long. For me, the cliff was leaping into the unknown without another job lined up. Like you, I hate leaping off cliffs. I like a plan. I like security. I had none – just a persistent nudge to leave that job and jump.
Leaping off any cliff, when guided to do so, is a big, bold action! It seems to me that more and more of us are being asked to leap into new jobs, relationships, spiritual communities, and whole new lives than any other previous time.
If you’re being led to a cliff, you’ll know it, and you’ll resist it until it becomes too uncomfortable not to.
Only after I jumped did I discover that the Loving Life Force had something far better available for me, something I hadn’t even heard of before. I was doing lots of meditating, listening, and some pleading. What am I ‘supposed’ to do now? To my amazement, and within a few short weeks after leaving my job, I discovered the University of Santa Monica, a school that taught Spiritual Psychology. In the middle of Barnes and Noble, I felt every cell in my body light up when I read about this school. I knew it was my next step, but within minutes, my brain was talking me out of it. How could I make that happen? I had a long list of why I could never possibly attend that school… but my heart knew it was my next step.
That’s how the heart-brain connection works! Our hearts guide us to our most expansive, joyful experience of life aligned with our soul's blueprint, followed by the brain’s long litany of why it won’t work.
It’s not just you who feels afraid of change; we all do.
Our brain’s job is to protect us in the ways we programmed it to do while very young. Our brains are like little old grandmas who adore us and want to keep us snuggled and bundled up in a safe cocoon of warmth, love, and comfort. But warmth, love, and comfort can feel stifling after a while because we came here for the adventure of life!
Like every captivating adventure story, life is filled with peaks and valleys. We have all known valleys of sorrow, rejection, fear, victimhood, and some form of abandonment. We’re all afraid of being hurt again. When we’re in the valley, we literally long for someone like a grandma to bundle us up, take care of us, and make sure we don’t feel any more pain. Most of us, if honest, will admit to wanting someone to swoop in and rescue us when life feels scary.
But that’s not much of an adventurous story. Who wants to read that boring story? I’m drawn to the story where the broken-hearted heroine rises up from the ashes like a Phoenix and soars even after being burned to ashes. I want to know how she did that so I can do it, too. Don’t you?
I’ve talked to hundreds of people, and I know that every single one of us has a Phoenix within. We’ve all been deeply wounded, and still, something within us pushes us forward, daring to believe life might still hold some promise, some glimmer of hope that this is not how our story ends.
Like you, I’ve had multiple opportunities to collapse and rise up. The dream job turned nightmare is one of those experiences, but certainly not the only time I wanted to be rescued. What made the dream job scenario so memorable for me is that it was the first time I consciously chose to leap off a cliff, daring to believe I would be caught. I was.
It's scary when our inner guidance tells us to trust, leave a familiar but life-draining situation, and jump into the unknown. Every single time. But only by jumping do we have the experience of being caught!
Only by jumping do we discover that Love held us all along. Only by jumping do we get to experience the next exciting, expansive part of our life.
Once I leaped out of that energy-sucking job, I discovered coaching, a career I didn’t even know existed. To this day, I’m enthusiastic and excited about my job. That initial jolt of knowing in the middle of Barnes and Noble was my inner guidance speaking loud and clear.
That’s how we know something is aligned for us. It lights us up!
It’s not about doing the ‘right’ thing; there is no ‘right’ thing, only your thing. You can live your life a hundred different ways, and they can all be ‘right.’ What will not change is who you are, what you’re here to experience, and how that feels inside. It feels great!
Additionally, when you’re doing what lights you up, you can be certain you will also be giving something back to life. A filled heart overflows.
Have I had times of struggle in this job? Absolutely. The struggle is guaranteed, but so is a triumph – if you give yourself permission to walk away from what no longer serves you.
You have an inner compass, what I call inner guidance, and it is leading you to the blueprint of your life that you came here to live. You will most likely need to leap off a cliff or two, but it’s worth it.
In conclusion, I’m going to ask you to consider the following questions:
Where in your life are you ignoring your inner guidance?
What are you tolerating?
Where do you turn to numbing behavior?
Where have you stuffed your emotions?
What aren’t you saying?
When is the last time you felt really excited about something?
The feeling of being ‘lit up’ is a lot like those intense, exuberant feelings of new love, but they’re not dependent on another person.
What needs to change in your life? I rarely use the word ‘need’ because I prefer ‘could,’ but sometimes we do ‘need’ to make a change, and our entire body speaks to us. Life-draining energy feels heavy, suffocating, and like a battle. Life-giving energy feels exciting, expansive, and filled with possibility.
How good can your life be? I’m talking about your giant, best possible dream of a life, not the bare minimum that you could stand. Don’t let the HOW stop you from dreaming. When you get clear on the dream and the feeling of living that dream, the how will show up.
WHO do you need to be to have that experience? Are you ready to jump?
