You're Not Behind, You're Becoming

Hey y'all,

This week we're staying on the theme of my birthday as I wrap up year 28 and reflect on how things have gone and what I want to bring into this next year of life! Feeling 'behind' is a very natural nervous system response that is often hard to navigate and understand. In this episode I am breaking that down, so you can leverage this information to enjoy where you're at today, but more importantly, so you can enjoy the journey. 

If you feel threatened when dynamics shift with friends and people enter new stages of their life before you do, this episode will definitely help. I have felt that way many times so you are not alone. You're not behind, you're becoming! Thanks for being here.

Xx,

Shy ♡  

Transcript

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Hello everyone. Welcome back to Shy Space, where we talk about all things pertaining to mental health and manifestation. My name is Shy and I'm the host of this podcast and I'm so excited to be back here with another episode, uh, with y'all. So thank you so much for joining me. I am very shocked with the consistency that I've had recently in filming episodes, but I will say I'm very grateful for my audience because y'all give me a reason to show up and be consistent. It's really hard to be consistent when no one gives a fuck. So I really appreciate y'all so much and yeah, just very grateful. So last week I talked a little bit about just like my thoughts on going into year 29 of life. And the reason that I did that is because I just feel like, turning 29, I take that shit seriously. And so we're gonna talk about it a little bit more in terms of like the theme of this week's episode until I turn 29 next week. And then we can't use that as an excuse to like use this theme. And beat this dead horse, if you will. But until then we're going to. But yeah, I just feel like, first of all, I'm extremely grateful to go into another year of life because that's precious and that's a gift in itself. Even though I'm not always the most gracious in terms of how I show my gratitude for that gift, um, it is a gift. And with that gift, I would love to take the most inspired action and manifest the best year of life for myself and everyone around me. So, like I said, I take that shit seriously. It's important to me and I just feel like, I like to do a lot of reflecting and kind of looking ahead. In the process of doing that, I've had a lot of realizations surrounding just the trajectory of my life and where I've had situations happen that were so important and so imperative to get me to where I am now. And you know, time flies, it's crazy. But like in those moments I was just so distraught and or depressed and anxious for, you know, the next thing and the next step. And I just never really understood like all of those steps and how important they were in terms of the the role that they played in getting me to where I am and just like the role that they play in the journey too. Because I feel like, at least for me and kind of what I struggle with is like getting caught up in not enjoying the journey and just being so fixated on the outcome because that's when you start to get unhappy. It's like if you are constantly chasing outcomes, you are not going to be happy. It is just impossible because every single time the outcome comes, you're like, okay, well what's next then? And take it from somebody who freaking knows. Like literally, I remember the first time I made my first six figures years ago, and I was like, this feels subpar. It was just the lamest experience, and I was expecting it to be like, I don't even fucking know what I was expecting. Honestly. Magic though. Roses, butterflies, rainbows. Unicorns maybe. I don't know. I was expecting a lot. That's what I felt because I was looking for something outside of me to fulfill internal things. So on that note, when you're on a journey to become whatever it is you want to be. A doctor, a lawyer, a pop star. A mother, like whatever it is that you want to be, we all have that in common, right? So we're all headed towards something, looking towards some future goals, some future desired outcome. What we all also have in common in that regard is the fact that the journey is, again, the most important part of what we're doing and why we're doing it. We actually, from a spiritual perspective, pre, you know, everything's like predefined or predestined, if you will. And so we choose these things intentionally because they are meant to fulfill us in some way that we're looking for. And so with that being said, the journey is gonna be pretty damn important, right? Because all of the things that are happening, like to get you to where you want to go are just astronomically important and you cannot see that when it's happening. Like I said, you cannot sometimes have that like 360 or whatever it is, view, but I promise you if you can try to have it and cultivate a mindset that zooms out or you know, a habit of taking the mindset of zooming out. I have, this is so silly, but I mean, actually it's not silly. I have perspective is everything written in my Instagram bio. It's been that way for literally so long. I will not, probably never change it. And I have that tattooed on me in its own form. I have a telescope tattoo on my arm to remind me that perspective is everything because it is. And I just think that we get so lost in the sauce, if you will, when it comes to like going on these journeys to our goals and all these things we wanna do, and then we get there and we're just like so unsatisfied. And it's just really sad, honestly, because we should be the opposite of that. So I think it's really important to talk about. The fact that the journey is everything and you're never behind in life. Everything is predestined like I said. At least that's what I believe. And in the pro, like in the process of every single stepping stone, every single milestone, every single job, every single rejection, experience, piece of feedback that you have and you receive, is all placed together in this like universal puzzle piece that is your life. And everything holds equal importance. Maybe some things are, you know, more catalystic than others. That's totally fair. Right. But there's just like so many little moments that. If those little moments had changed, that would then lead to potentially changing the big moments. And that's why I feel like everything does have equal importance. Um, or that's at least how I like to look at it because it makes it easier for you to romanticize your life and even romanticize the mundane when that's, really challenging to do at times. So why not make it a little bit easier? So, yeah, I don't know. I just like I said, I've been doing a lot of reflecting and just thinking and planning and all of that stuff about how I wanna, you know, live the last year of my twenties in my life. And I'm very serious about it once again. I have a lot of plans and a lot of aspirations for this year, and I'm very excited about it. I don't wanna carry that fear anymore. I feel like a lot of us carry it, that feeling of like being behind. And I feel like the reason that I kind of got onto this mindset and, and really thinking about this in detail is because I was going into this year with a really negative mindset. You know, a lot of people are always like, oh, like rip to my twenties, all this stuff. I don't want to think of it that way. I want to think of it as welcoming my thirties because I think that's so exciting. Like a new decade. It's a new era of life, truly a new chapter. And I don't know, I just think it's really special. And I know a lot of people who are older are gonna be like, yep, that tracks hopefully, uh, hopefully you feel this way, but. I have noticed that as I've gotten older, life does get better because I have more of my shit figured out. So naturally it just is easier to be happy because it's like I'm not struggling in every area. You know? I'm not trying so hard to figure things out, but I don't know. I think all of my twenties felt behind in every aspect of my life. And that is just such an exhausting way to feel. So if you feel that way, I'm so sorry. And that was a very long-winded way to say that this episode is for you and give you an introduction to this episode. But I think at this point, you know where we're headed. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel behind in my career. I don't feel behind in my love life, even though there isn't one, you know, like, and that would've never been something that I could have said. Probably even three years ago. I was very, very fixated on growth in all regards, especially when it came to like finding a person a few years ago. And yeah, I just, I think it's so easy to get caught up too in the hustle culture or just, you know, the social media of it all. Where people are like, yeah, I've done so many things by the time I'm this age, and you're like, Ugh, what am I doing? I'm literally such a failure. But you're not. You're not behind in any way, emotionally, spiritually, financially, physically, just because you see people online living this life. Like, first of all, you don't even know how much of it is true. Let's start there. Second of all, your journey is not comparable to anyone else's. So don't even start with that shit'cause it's just not worth it. I am so lucky to be where I'm at now in my life and my career. And I've had so many things happen in the past where I was like very, very upset about the different ways that my trajectory went. And I look back now and I'm like I truly wouldn't change anything. Like there was just little pieces of each experience that fed into the next step or phase in my life. And it just all makes sense as I look back 30 years young, on the past 28 years of my life. But I will say too, like the scariest part of all of this is that it doesn't feel like we're being dramatic when we have these thoughts. It just feels so true. And I think that that's really, really hard because it makes you not want to question it or like counter those thoughts. It just makes you wanna feed into it and kind of like fuel the fear more, which is really the opposite of what you should be doing because you're not behind at all. And what if, what if you actually like told yourself that? What if you actually believed that and you didn't just listen to me say that? What if you actually floated that idea? With, you know, your internal executive team and you agreed that you are in the middle of becoming, especially if you're similar to me in age, definitely you should not feel that way at all. But even if you're 20, 30, 40, 50 years older than me and you're in the middle of becoming a new version of yourself, that is fucking fantastic. If you're, let's talk about that actually. If you're 70 and you're becoming a new version of yourself, that's pretty fucking sick. That's actually fucking unreal. Lemme just cuss it out real quick. Because you know how many people solidify who they are by the time they're 35, 40 and they never change. And it's really sad because they're probably really unhappy if they're complacent in their life and they stop trying to change their life at that age. Construction is always messy before it's impressive. I can confidently speak to that as I watch the I 35 in Austin, Texas get torn down to be rebuilt and expanded upon, which is desperately needed, especially in the area that I live in. However, let me just tell you, it's a fucking shit show driving by it, and I avoid driving in that general area at all times. I take a new path to go where I need to go whenever possible, because it's ugly. But it's going to be an impressive, impressive turnout when it's done. It's gonna take years, but it's gonna be worth it. So let this be your sign. Maybe you're not late, maybe you are just a little bit of a bridge under construction. I don't know. Okay, so let's talk about why being behind feels so real from a nervous system perspective'cause you know I like to get into the nitty gritty of that shit because it runs our life and it just don't make no sense. But we can make it make sense and break it down. We've talked a lot about dysregulation in some of my previous episodes, so please feel free to take a look at those or listen, I should say, and let me know if you have thoughts. But your nervous system is always tracking safety, is something that I've talked about. And the way that it does this is through a lot of different methods, but one of those is comparison. And so you have to go back to thinking about, how we've evolved as humans back from being tribal homosapiens and all that. When we were tribal homo sapiens, being in a tribe, AKA belonging with people actually was so important because our survival was contingent upon it. So when we don't match up with people or feel like we're in sync with people in certain ways, that can feel like a threat because that's where that original instinct comes from. Which I find that to be pretty crazy. But when you think about it, it really does make sense because that's just the basis of who we are. And our nervous system is genuinely wired for a completely different life than we're living. So when your timeline not your personal timeline, but like your Instagram timeline, do they still call it that? Or is did I just show my age really, really clearly? When your Instagram feed your for you page, is not matching your personal page. Yeah. Like that's gonna feel fucking threatening. That's gonna feel like you're behind in life. You're gonna get left behind. Like the people in your life are not going to be there because you're not gonna be in the same chapter. Like, trust me, ladies and gentlemen, I have had so many thoughts where I've been like, oh my gosh, so many of my friends are getting married and I'm not married. We're not gonna be friends anymore. Like, what even am I going to do? It's very dramatic. And I think that's understandable in some ways if you live like a totally different life than someone just because they're married, maybe. But I don't know. I think it's really easy to get so caught up in that and it's just so not true. And I know that to be true also because I'm friends with so many different ages of people that it just goes to show that like, and maybe not everyone is like that, but I do really think that age is just a number in a lot of cases. So if you do feel this way, just know that it's not a weakness. It's just, again, your nervous system wiring. It's innate, it's automatic. It's not something that you can control, but you can control the way that you interpret that information and respond to it, because wiring is not the same thing as truth and validity. So you have to decide what feels true to you at the end of the day, but just because something feels super, super urgent from your nervous system doesn't mean that it's accurate. And I've said this in a couple other episodes, and I really think that's like an important line to hone in on, because that urgency is so common when it comes to perceived threats that your nervous system flags and then has a spike in cortisol levels as a result, and so you really feel it. So you can't ignore that. But again, it doesn't mean that it's accurate. Sometimes you just have a response to something and it's not like the needed response, but your body is doing it to protect you, your mind's doing it to protect you. That's what matters. Your nervous system just interprets I'm behind as I'm unsafe in some cases. And again, that's totally fine. Alright. Now that we've talked about how that operates and why we feel that way from a nervous system perspective, let's talk about the actual like in-between or becoming that new person, like in between phase, becoming that new person, that new identity, and just stepping into a new chapter. I think something that I really wish was more well known, or at least more commonly talked about, and maybe it is now, but I don't think it was a few years ago at least. But when you get to a point in your life where you're about to expand, it's very common that a lot of things in your life will start to fall away to make space for the new things, the new endeavors, people, whatever it may be. And that can be really jarring because your life can start to shift significantly and just look really different. And therefore it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel safe or comfortable, and it can just feel like a heavy period of loss before it feels like that true growth. You know, you're gonna start outgrowing things like you're, becoming someone new so you're no longer in alignment with old habits, coping mechanisms, people, dynamics with individuals, versions of yourself. You might not even be fully aware of what that new version of you is yet. So you are in that like weird middle period, which I totally get. Been there many times. You're not who you were, but you're not who you are fully becoming quite yet. You're on the journey to getting there, and that middle period can feel like complete backwards. Like stepping backwards or taking steps back, it can feel like stagnation. It can feel just like completely counterproductive and just extremely wrong. Um, but it's important to try to ride the waves and just trust the process because again, construction is messy. The restructuring process, it's not always the most like glamorous and glorious, you know, it's at the end of the day, like. You literally have to remove things from your life for new things to be able to come in because you otherwise don't have the time, space, mental energy, whatever, to give to these new things. So it's just how it goes. But like, you don't say that the construction project is behind while it's in progress. Or like if somebody's building a house, you don't say that it's not a house just because it's like in the process of being framed, you know? Yeah, I don't know. You call it under construction, so do that for yourself if that makes you feel better. But yeah, I don't know. I just, for me personally, becoming has felt like loss a lot of the time and just chaos, even sometimes before it has felt like true growth and expansion and I wasn't expecting that. I was very shocked by that the first time that I like, really, truly experienced it and was aware of it. With that can often come a gap within your identity that kind of causes you to shift because you don't feel like you can identify with the person that you were, you don't feel like you can identify with the person that you're becoming, and so you start to fall into the gap, which I like to think of it as like a literal gap, like if you were to visualize like a cartoon, like running across the road and then they show a gap where they can trip and fall. In the gap is the things like doubt, loneliness, shame, confusion, whatever. And you're just like not allowing yourself internally to catch up with the external. And the reason that I say that is because just because you're not fully 100% the person that you want to become, doesn't mean you can't start showing up and acting like them, so why not? Like you should just start. Because when those two things don't match, it's really easy to be like, oh, I've failed. You know? I'm not there yet, but you just have to keep going. And you just have to keep trying and you just have to keep showing up. Because it's not failure, you're not failing. Again, it's the construction process. There is lag time. It is not an overnight thing. Anybody who tells you, you know, do this and you'll have overnight success. Fucking bullshit. Manifestation is magical by all means. It can certainly show up in a magical way like that, but for like a normal day to day, this is how it works. Bullshit. Growth happens internally before it shows up externally, and it is really hard to do that like transmutation process where you shed your old layer and you step into your new one. I don't know how snakes do it because it's fucking hard. But similar to a tree, you know, you don't see the roots growing underground. That doesn't mean that nothing's happening, but like there's a whole ass root that grows before the tree comes up. And same thing with certain vegetables and plants and things like that. Like, growth is happening. We're not seeing it. And then bam, it's there. Now let's talk about why becoming a new version of yourself requires slowness. I love talking about why we should slow down, because I feel like as a society, we have sped up tremendously and it is crazy. We live in a culture that is just absolutely obsessed with speed, overnight success, overnight healing, glow, fast glow ups, like all of those things. But the more that we feed into that, the more that we're feeding into ego. Because the ego wants us to speed up and we don't wanna build our ego. We wanna build our identity, we wanna build stability. We want to build grounded peace and calmness within ourselves, and that's what slowness builds. So if you are trying to do anything that requires becoming a new version of yourself, like relearning how to establish boundaries. Or just learning how to establish them in the first place. Or maybe you're learning how to regulate your nervous system like I've been over the past couple years, or you're fixing your financial habits, or you're starting a new job, or you're learning how to be in a healthy relationship, or be confident. Like there are so many things that you could be processing or experiencing that would lead to the need to slow down because you're in the process of evolving. And again, this is a time intensive process depending on what it is that you're doing, but it doesn't mean that you're delayed because you slow down. And it's actually one of the most powerful things that you can do in a lot of cases. I actually learned about this in, or not learned about it, but I learned more about it, and I gained more confidence in my ability to actually give into slowness and giving into like resting and recharging. Because it's just something that's brought up a lot in yoga. And I find that when I actually do give in and listen to myself and like honor those needs, it just ends up being so worth it. And so transformative in terms of how it impacts me or how it like, helps me heal or revitalize my energy or whatever. So I just think that if you're trying to build something that you want to last, like, a regulated nervous system, it's gonna take time. And so you really wanna slow down and, and take that time with it. Now let's talk about how to help with integration. So I know we talk a lot about my horse. He's such an angel and he just teaches me so much. And I feel like I've been learning a lot about how horses really help us integrate. They help us relax our nervous systems and they actually sync up with us and our nervous systems and they co-regulate with us. And so they allow us to kind of like see patterns and behaviors within ourselves a lot easier because of the energy that they respond to, to us, in terms of like what energy we bring to them. They respond directly with the same energy. And so it can be a little bit confusing sometimes'cause we're like, what the fuck are you doing? Like why? Why are you walking away from me? Why won't you let me pet you? What's the deal? And it's'cause you got something going on there and maybe you don't know it, and the horse is gonna help you discover that, which is really exciting. But the cool thing about horses too is when it comes to like helping you integrate or become a new version of yourself, they don't give a shit about timeline. They don't give a shit about your resume. They don't give a shit about your five year plan. All they care about is whether or not you're grounded, whether or not you are a safe place to be for them. And if you're like rushing, they hate that. You cannot rush trust with a horse, you cannot rush having a relationship with a horse and like build a, a good relationship with them. You cannot fake confidence around them. They just, they really force you to really embody whatever it is that you say you wanna become, which is unbelievably amazing. So, being grounded does require some repetition and I think that's something that my horse has taught me is that it's not just, it's not just like a one, one time, one stop shop in terms of like being fixed. It's a journey and it takes time and it takes repetition and it takes being present, which is really, really hard. But you can't fake being present in front of a horse and they will snap you right back into reality and out of disassociation if you're in it. So I love that too. Alright, just wrapping things up for y'all. Just want to remind you that you are not behind, you are becoming, and if you are continuously choosing yourself, choosing growth, and trying to heal and trying to just become your best self and become aligned and all of those amazing things. That process is very, like I said, it's not glamorous at first, it's not flashy. It's not what people put in the magazines or on their highlight reels, but it is absolutely worth it. It is absolutely necessary and, it is not something you will ever regret putting your time and your energy into. Because these choices are quiet, they're slow, they are anticlimactic a lot of the time. They look like nothing is happening a lot of the time. But just like I talked about with the roots and everything, everything is happening underneath, behind the scenes, you know, whatever you wanna, however you wanna say it. It's happening and their results will speak for themselves when they show up. So you have so much time to become the person that you wanna be and rushing that is not going to get you there any faster. It's actually just gonna make the journey a little bit less enjoyable for you, most likely. So I would not recommend it, and I would recommend remembering that you're never late, you're always on time. Maybe sometimes you're actually late to like appointments and stuff, but even then, you're never late, you're never behind. You're becoming, you're layering, you're transitioning, you're evolving, you're doing all the things, and it's a freaking journey. So don't forget that. I love you guys so much. Thank you for listening to this. I hope it was helpful. And let me know your thoughts if you have any, or questions, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. I'll see you next week. Bye.