Living in the Flow: How to Follow Your Destiny (Minibang)

Speaker 1: 0:02

My name is Jen Briggs and welcome to the whole shebang where, on Mondays, you get what else but a mini bang. These short episodes are really meant to meet you where you're at, to help you set an intention or focus for the week, to consider a perspective that maybe you haven't before and to answer the most common questions that not only propelled my personal and professional growth, but the best of the best I see around me. This is where we unbecome shedding the layers and the old ways that aren't serving us anymore, and where we continue becoming, stepping into and magnifying more of who you really are and who you're meant to be. So buckle up, buttercups, we're diving in. I had a mini bang recorded for you on energy that I was planning to put out on Monday. It's Saturday for me and I woke up and started journaling and something else came out, ironically. It's about what it feels like to surrender in life so that we can live in more of a flow state and live in less resistance and be more aligned with what the universe has designed for us. So today is going to be a little bit more I would classify, like spiritual and nature for you, and it honestly feels like a part two to last week's mini bang, which I was just my. My ego is hesitant to put this out, but, um it, I'm going to do it anyways. So today we're talking about, uh, this idea of surrender. How do we let go of our, um, how do we let go of our attachment to arranging our life? How do we let go of the easiest way to say it is this need to control things? And so I'm going to read to you what I just wrote this morning. I think it was a little bit of a download for you.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Today we want to talk about letting go more deeply. This is not a practice that must be difficult or painful, but it is one to be intentional with. You'll have times and circumstances in life that will cause confusion and pain and a disjointed way of being. But notice this that is not natural. Brokenness and pain is not nature. Wholeness, healing, bliss, love, those are all the ways of nature. In order to arrive, flow and live in these ways, one must surrender to nature, that is to say, one must surrender to God. In doing so, everything in life will begin to heal and be restored to its rightful way of being, to its order.

Speaker 1: 2:55

But we fight our bodies, we fight our brothers, our sisters. We fight our own desires. We fight our intuition. We fight mother nature, own desires. We fight our intuition. We fight mother nature, constantly wrestling with our ego. We step in over and over and over, thinking that we know better, trying to override the ultimate source of knowing the universe. But the universe is love. It is forgiving, it is patient and it won't fight back. Do you really understand that God won't force its way on you? The universe won't fight you back.

Speaker 1: 3:37

So while you're asserting what you perceive to be authority, you thwart the most powerful force there is nature. Can you imagine the moon telling the earth to spin slower? Can you imagine the ocean telling the shore to move back? The laws of nature are in perfect order and we are a part of that ecosystem. So to surrender, to let go, is to step into nature's perfect design.

Speaker 1: 4:13

Okay, that's what I journaled this morning and I figured I would share that with you, and it really struck me as really powerful that I just keep coming back to this. It's nothing new, it's science, it's religion, it's all of the things combined. That nature in its most natural state is in perfect order and we as humans have been given this opportunity to think and to feel and to make decisions, and our thinking is often very tightly associated with our ego. We all have ego. I don't just mean ego in the sense of pride but we as humans step in thinking that we're fixing something. Maybe we take wolves out of an ecosystem in Yellowstone and we think we're fixing it, but all of the ways that biology is interconnected, without one move can mess up the whole ecosystem and the way that nature would thrive otherwise. So while we might even think that we're doing a service to helping, stepping in to be great, we might not have any ill intention, but when we step in outside of what is normal and natural, we thwart what is the most powerful source that we can tap into.

Speaker 1: 5:44

So how do we do this? How do we surrender to life's flow? How do we surrender to what is natural? And for some of you, myself included, this idea of God might be very triggering for you. I've, like, flopped around what to call this higher source for the last few years and I'm just starting to eke back into calling it God. So I get that If that's you. I believe that there is a powerful source and a divine nature to our way of being so, call it what. You will Call it universe, call it science, you could call it a lot of things, but this requires a surrendering to something greater than us. So how do we do that? And I'm just going to give you what I reflected on this morning, how I've done that and, along with that, some of the this, all of all of my way of being or my way of navigating, has been very heavily influenced by the books that I've read and the podcast I've listened to. And I'm going to quote Michael Singer at the end of this. He has a book called the Surrender Experiment, which I will link in the show notes. You can buy that if you want, or you can go look it up and listen to it on Audible. He was a gosh. What did he start out? As in his book, he ended up living a very like solitary life as a meditator and like, went on this really deeply sort of spiritual meditation journey and ended up writing and coding WebMD and becoming like a billionaire, super smart guy. And all of that was a result of him surrendering, so surrendering to the opportunities that the universe put in front of him. So how do we surrender? Let me come back to that simple steps.

Speaker 1: 7:40

One, I would always say you start by tuning into your body, or your intuition, or your knowing. And if you feel really fuzzy on, how do I know what that knowing is? How do I tune into my intuition? It's a muscle to practice, it's something to practice listening to, and it will show up for you in different ways. If you follow me on social media, you probably saw in my stories Yesterday I was just having this super in flow afternoon and evening. The way that I know that I'm in flow, which is really uncomfortable for some people, is that I get like lit up with little tears of joy. It's just and it's so flow state for me. Some people get goosebumps, some people will hear sort of like a not an audible voice and I've I've got that sometimes too like a little like hey, go do this thing. A little tap on the shoulder, and so you can just start by being like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to listen to this and see what happens, and then see what happens and take note of it. If you find that you that one thing leads to the other and you're more in flow, then you start understanding that that is your intuition. Sometimes it might show up as just this pit in your stomach or a little bit of heat in your chest.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Our bodies are highly intuitive. They have a ton of wisdom Physiologically. There's a lot of science and research behind that, so start paying attention to the little cues in your body. Number two it requires an openness to that and an openness to hearing other people and to being open to God and different perspectives. So, are you energetically closed off? Are you walled off? Do you feel like you just know better? You know right now, if I'm just asking you this question on a scale of one to 10, how open are you? You know you could just give me a number and answer it. You know, if you're open, if you're honest with yourself and you can start practicing, even breathing into those spots in your body that feel really closed off, or in conversation, recognizing, just be the witness to yourself, recognize when you start to close off, when you start to think I know better, if you can catch yourself and be a witness to am I open? Am I open? The third thing is let go in the little things. If you are really adept at controlling every detail in your life, then you can start by letting go in the little things Funny story.

Speaker 1: 10:19

I was riding in the car with my business partner, tim Was this yesterday or the day before we're heading to a meeting and we had it in. I put the address into whatever my MapQuest MapQuest, oh my gosh, that's from like 20 years ago whatever my navigation system. So I put the address into my navigation system and Tim's driving and he's taking all these ninja back roads and he had asked like hey, like let me know where to go. And I'm like, okay, cool, it's in the navigation system. And he's not following the navigation system. And I feel myself getting tight, like a little anxious. Why, it's not that far away. The stakes are not high If he takes a quote, unquote, wrong turn or goes his own way, but I'm feeling resistance to it. And so I was like hey, take a left here. He's like Jen, this is my neighborhood, I'm avoiding some stoplights, like I know, I know where I'm headed. Like this is my neighborhood. I got it. He was kind about it and I was like, okay, you're right, I'm going to let go of my need to control this right now. You take your way and when you need me to step in, you let me know. Those are these little ways?

Speaker 1: 11:36

How often do we find ourselves needing to arrange life? Deepak Chopra talks about this in the law of detachment. He says it means to say that we have an intention in life. So I have an intention to get to this place, but I'm going to let go of my need to arrange how I get there. So that is the law of detachment is having your focus on an intention. It doesn't mean that you let go of desires. It doesn't mean that you let go of goals or where you're headed those often were, I think, put inside of you by the universe anyways but it means that we detach from the how of getting there and that we detach from the need to arrange our life and control it. So again, be witness to yourself.

Speaker 1: 12:22

You don't need to judge yourself harshly by the way when these things come up, but throughout the day, throughout the week, start noticing how often you feel the need to step in and arrange it, step in and control it, and especially if the stakes aren't high, this is a perfect opportunity for you to practice surrender. Can I let go? Can I remain energetically open? Can I surrender this just to practice what it feels like to let go of the need to arrange. The second part of that is that it begins teaching your nervous system. There's a physiological response that our body has I talked about this in last week's mini bang that when we feel like we're out of control, it can actually signal a response to our brain that can put us into fight or flight. So there's a real reason why sometimes you step in because your body feels unsafe, but you're, especially when it's like do I take a left turn here? We know, logically, that we're safe, but our body has been wired, our, our subconscious brain has been wired to think that we're a threat, that change is threat, that this different way of doing things is a threat. So in these little ways, you begin to retrain your nervous system to understand that letting go is safe, that surrender is safe. I'm going to leave it. So let me just like recap on that. Start by tuning into your body too, which is also where a lot of wisdom and intuition is. Notice the little cues, follow the little cues, start practicing them and seeing what happens when you follow those nudges along the way. Number two check your openness. Are you closed off or are you open? Number three let go in the little things.

Speaker 1: 14:14

I'm going to leave you with a couple of Michael Singer quotes that are just really powerful. If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to? Okay, I'm going to read that again. If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to? And lastly, what would happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my resistance and let the flow of life be in charge? My resistance and let the flow of life be in charge. What would happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my resistance and let the flow of life be in charge? I'm going to leave you with that today. Have a banging day, have an amazing week, live in the flow. It's pretty fun there.