Your friends in healthy, happy relationships aren’t telling you what it takes to get there because you’d call it cringe and judge them for being gooey …. so i’ll tell you: you need to be approx 10x more willing to melt into silliness and giggles than you think at all times, and you also need to learn to express anger and be able to healthily confront each other in an un-triggered way where you actually say what you mean, state what you need, and call out your partner on their bullshit

(and allow them to do the same to you)

how to create an upwards spiral: read the full essay: read.isabelunraveled.com/p/upwards-spir…

watching jordan peterson go literally red in the face crazy trying to make sense to richard dawkins while dawkins refuses to grasp at a single iota of mythical and symbolic speak makes me feel seen jp: you must have slayed some dragons in your life, have you not?

dawkins: dragons don’t eXiSt, jordan

jp: 🤬

if you cringe at and are embarrassed by who you are or what you do, you are essentially inviting the world to judge you vs. when you just show up as you are unapologetically, the world tends to assume there’s nothing strange happening there, that there is no need to judge you. the most challenging judge to please is the one that stares at you all day long and narrates all the ways that what you’re doing is wrong, embarrassing, cringe-worthy and going to make everyone thing X, Y, or Z about you. and this judge exists inside of you!!!

this desire has blossomed into reality. more below

https://twitter.com/isabelunraveled/status/1782489008280309943

i’ve been doing 1-1 work for some time now, with the aim of helping individuals clarify their inner world, understand their true desires, and put their life into balance with their values in a way that feels genuine and true to them.

the world becomes surprisingly malleable when you start to consciously exert your will on it overwhelm can come from an under-expression of agency, of will. if things feel like they are happening *to you* at an overwhelming rate, recalibrate. identify your desired reality and impose it on the world. you don’t always need to go with the flow. you can create your own flow!

after an unusually busy weekend, i’m in awe of how much ‘recalibration’ is needed to balance out a few days of living mildly out of congruence with my intuition + natural energy

it makes me think about what recalibrating from *years* of this—or in some cases a lifetime—must take one of the main reasons i’ve made the choices i've made is to create the space to live in alignment with my intuition

to do things as simple as going on a walk when i want to, or to stay up late and work when i feel called to, or to do nothing at all when i feel the need to rest

when people ask me why i am the way i am i should really just show them the notes my dad wrote me growing up one of the most important things i want to communicate through my own existence is: unconditional love *works*

my biggest blessing is my parents, my family. i felt loved, seen and appreciated for who i was growing up. in adulthood, this helps me take risks and trust myself +

one of my most significant, visceral learnings from working 1-1 with people is that action is absolutely paramount to changing how you feel.

i speak with the individuals i’m working with weekly. we gain deeper clarity on what they want, understand the resistance they are feeling towards getting it, and then map intentional actions to their desires so they can manifest them.

the #1 thing that makes them feel better is ACTION. if we get to a place of clarity where they know what they need to *do* but don’t do it for whatever reason, we are destined to have a very similar conversation the following week. progress can’t happen without applying self-knowledge through action.

if you want to feel better, you need to change what you are *doing*

you need to act in alignment with your desires. if you continue stalling on what you *know* you need to do, thinking you are going to make yourself feel better through more reflection once you *already* understand the feeling, you may begin making a problem bigger than it is.

introspection and reflection are valuable in so far as they help you understand the inner signals that are trying to provoke action, but if you *ignore* what they are actually saying (“this doesn’t feel good, fix it with action please!”) you’ll begin to feel helpless because the feeling isn’t changing even though you understand it.

but it’s not changing, because you’re not changing what you are doing!

understanding yourself is valuable. but don’t forget to use that self-understanding to do what is needed—to do what your body and mind are imploring you to do, so you can feel better, clearer and elevate yourself to new heights of growth.

without action, endless reflection can send you in circles that make you feel worse.

figuring out what you need to do to change your state, then doing it as soon as possible is how you’ll feel better. less thinking, more doing (once you understand what you need to do).

apply your self-knowledge if you want to self-actualize. this has made me quite suspicious of any modality that suggests it can help without *you* doing some sort of work to solidify a breakthrough you’ve discovered. knowledge is embodied through action. there’s no shortcut around the work—you need to apply learnings to integrate them.

some thoughts on womanhood and self-actualization:

just because you’re an intelligent woman, doesn’t mean you need to do the same things an intelligent man wants to do. you might be interested in different things—in applying your intelligence to creative and alternative pursuits we’re not all meant to climb the same hierarchies and do the same jobs.

of course this goes for *all individuals* not just women vs. men but i do think we’re in a moment of primarily praising women for succeeding in male dominated fields and discouraging them from other pursuits

i’ve noticed the most effective people i know move with a certain *slowness* that is distinct from others.

their slowness is a result of presence, care and intention. they don’t rush decisions. they take their time. they don’t move in haste, they move at a pace that feels right. their slowness is a reflection of their comfort with doing things the way *they think* they should be done.

when we are not rushing, we see things clearly. when we are rushing, we miss important details.

slowness is a manifestation of having our full attention present.

i’ve noticed this interesting correlation between people who really seem to have their lives together having great, unique taste

i think this is because if you don’t have an established sense of self, your taste ends up being a big amalgamation of what you think others will like my hypothesis: the uniqueness of your taste is proportional to your sense of individuality

this is why people that never “left their bubble” from childhood wear the same things, like the same stuff etc

they never broke free to develop their own taste, or their own individuality

the key to building habits is finding a way to look forward to them instead of dread them

and the key to looking forward to them is doing them enough to see the good they bring to your life

starting is always hard, but it once you develop a rhythm, it basically maintains itself when developing anything new—a habit, a company, a project, a relationship—there will always be the start up costs at the beginning. there is basically no way around this (that i’m aware of). the first step is hardest because there is no momentum behind it.

when i really want something and it’s unusually hard to get, i think of it as a game where the universe is testing how far i’ll go to to get it

if i stick it out i’m pretty much guaranteed to win so i might as well enjoy the journey instead of rushing it and resenting the effort like: trivial but i really wanted a book and i went to five book stores before i finally found it. when i was heading to the last one i was like “this is ridiculous but funny” and actually enjoyed having to work for it a bit more than i expected. it showed me how much i wanted it

when you feed your curiosity, it replenishes itself ten-fold maybe this is why i start with a simple google search and suddenly i’m knee deep in 5 books i’m rotating through in parallel all related to the same subject (the aforementioned google search)

eckhart tolle says the level of truth you can discover depends on your level of inner-connectedness. you recognize truths because they grip your body and mind. you feel them.

but if you’re disconnected, you won’t detect this feeling—the truth won’t grip you. it’ll roll off you. another way to think about this:

• the more connected you are to yourself, the more open you are.
• the more open you are, the more sincerely you consider new ideas.
• the more sincerely you consider new ideas, the more likely you are to see ‘unlikely truths’

a prompt that came up while journalling today:

what would it look like to treasure and cherish each day of winter instead of dreading and resenting it?

there’s this incredible euphoria that flows through the entire city in the summer. EVERYONE is in a good mood, always outside. there’s a genuine blanket of happiness over the whole city. it’s pretty remarkable.

and in general, people can get pretty grim about winter, especially by the end of it (myself included).

we tend to project our internal state onto our external environment.

this is why we crave the environments we occupied when our internal state was good (we recall them positively), and we shudder at the thought of returning to the environments where we were in a negative state. if you spent a short period of euphoric time somewhere, you will fantasize about returning to it.

if you spent a dark period somewhere, you’ll never want to go back.

if you cycled through a variety of internal states somewhere, you’ll likely have mixed feelings about going back

we rise to the demands of our environment. but this leads us to depend heavily on external factors to elevate ourselves to our highest levels of performance and being.

what if we used our minds to create the conditions of high performance, without the externally induced stress? this is a challenging thing to do and takes active mental effort.

but what’s harder: putting in the work now to figure out how to activate yourself anywhere, any time, under any conditions, or relying on external factors to activate you indefinitely?

the grass grows where you water it.

in the mind, our thoughts are the water and our experience is the grass. where do you want your experience to grow? what do you want to feel more of? focus your thoughts there, and the correlated experiences will materialize into your life. want to feel more positive and joyful? think about what is already positive in your life, be grateful for what you currently have. think about the things you want, try to feel as if you already have them, then watch them grow and expand in your life.

something i’ve noticed: i have a bias to recommend things i’m currently consuming more strongly simply due to recency bias. but the recommendations i think of from a long time ago are higher signal because i still feel impacted by them despite having not revisited them in a while i am more likely to do this with content i don’t feel *that* strongly about. like for books/music this affects me less because i feel strongly about my recommendations independent of time. but tv shows/movies i’m a greater victim to this simply because my taste isn’t as refined.