The Miraculous Shitshow of Forging Your Own Path

It's a series. About putting away all other maps and drawing your own.

Suzanne gets a little more personal as she explores what she's learned from spending a lifetime trying to follow her own path. From unexpected detours and questionable decisions to surprising discoveries and hard-won wisdom, she reflects on the messy, nonlinear process of becoming yourself.

Because sometimes following your heart feels like a miracle. And sometimes it feels like a complete shitshow. Most of the time, it's both.

This series is a total free flow and stream of consciousness where Suzanne just turned on the mic and started talking. A special level of “let’s see what happens”

Thank you for listening! Learn more at suzannsole.com

Check out Suzanne's spiritual and sassy t-shirts at personallyspiritual.com

Transcript

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Wouldn't it be so much better if we could just listen to everybody else and be like, everybody knew exactly what was the perfect thing for my life, and so it turned out just perfectly because everyone just led me in the right direction. I didn't have to think for myself, and I didn't have to go down into the depths of my being, and I didn't have to be like, I'm gonna free ball it and just go out into the world and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You're listening to the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast with Suzanne Sol, episode 85. Hey motherfuckers, welcome to the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast, where we get into the delicious disaster the healing and spiritual awakening journey can be. I'm your host, Suzanne Sol, comedian, lifelong spiritual student, and I'm sharing some of the delicious crap I've learned along my journey that has helped me and that I hope helps you too. Okay, so what does it mean to follow your heart, aka your bliss, aka your path? First of all, I want to say something like a disclaimer. A lot of times I think when we think about following our own paths or forging our own experiences that uh when we don't do it or we haven't done it or we don't do it perfectly, a lot of times we may feel this like deep regret that tells us that that means everything we've done other than that has been a waste. And I beg to differ because following your own path is to me like a day-by-day experience. It's like everyday life. And I think when we outpicture our lives and we look at this big grand view as if we were watching like the movie roll credits of our lives, you know, uh there are so many moments that we might look back on and be like, oh gosh, I just did that one. Well, that was that was a ding-dong move. But guess what? I don't think you get out of those. And I don't think you get out of them if you follow your heart every single time either. We are gonna deal with caca in our lives. There is bullshit and there are fuck-ups we are going to make, no matter if we are perfectly following our bliss path heart, which I mean, obviously none of us are perfect, so how could that happen, LOL? But, you know, we have to look at life as the day-by-day experience that it is. And when we talk about purpose, we have to recognize that purpose is something we can only look back on and say, oh, that was my purpose. We can feel like we're fulfilling our purpose in the moment too, absolutely. But do we know to the infinite degree of what our per our purpose on the planet is? I don't know. Maybe we might feel like we do, maybe we do, but maybe we don't. I'm saying this because I think that when we think about following our path, following our bliss, we can get into the perfectionism thing and guilty as charged. You know what I'm saying? Like, I look at something and I say, well, I haven't done it this way, that way, this way, that way. I made this mistake, that mistake, and that is not a realistic view of our lives. When I tell you, you are not gonna get out of living your life without making phenomenal mistakes. I'm telling you the truth. So I wanted to just say that up front, the gist being that whether you have not followed the path that you had dreamt about in your heart uh at all, or you did all the way. Either way, there's crap to deal with in our lives. So I just wanted to say that so that we give ourselves a break while we're listening to this. And while I'm saying it, I'm giving myself a break too, because you know, a lot of times when I'm doing these episodes, I'm talking to myself too. So, what does it mean to follow your own path or your heart? I think it means that you are attentive to how you are feeling when you are navigating your life and what urges you on in your life, where you want to go based on your inner compass. And sometimes we have to get quiet before we can even hear our inner compass. And I think a lot of times we have to first shovel our way out of being immersed in other people's compasses for us before we can start hearing our compass ourselves. And I am someone who has had that journey. I have taken the time to journal and go to therapy and all of the things to try to lift up all of the compasses that culture, that society, that the people in our lives for the best intentions many times uh provide their compasses to our lives. And then we need to find our own. And so that's a journey, right? So the ability to follow our own path or follow our heart kind of first starts with an excavation of getting all of that that is not our true feeling in ourselves out of the mix. Now, am I saying not to consider the wisdom or insight or advice or suggestions of society, culture, loved ones? Not at all. But when you feel like you can't find what it is your path is or where you want to go or what direction you want to go in, I think that's a really wonderful clue that that is going to be the first step you want to take is to start to sift out everyone else's compasses or agendas, or they are presenting what they believe onto you because they care about you or they love you or a myriad of reasons. I mean, maybe some of them aren't great, you know, but that's what we have to do, excavate our own beliefs out from under the layers and layers and layers and layers, layers and layers of others. Which, like I said, you know, I think is something that we all must go through. And just some people may need more time to do this than others. And I was one of those people because I was really having a hard time finding my own voice and my own truth and my own path. And another thing I want to say is that it never ends, right? Discovering your own path is an active, living experience daily, right? Daily. Not that you're like racking your brain, like, what do I do? What do I do? But although you do have moments like that for sure. It's about how can I best follow my heart? What am I feeling the urge to do? What is my inner self, my inner voice telling me to do? If I can't hear it, let me sit down, let me journal, let me find out what is trying to come through. So the experience of finding your own path is also finding yourself, finding who you are, right? What are your likes and dislikes? What do you believe? What do you don't believe? And again, it's a living experience. You're never going to be like, concretely, this is what I believe, and this is what is true. That's not the way it works, guys. Life is a living experience day by day. We want to, you know, put a frame around it. We want to say, this is it, and you know, the way it is, and and it's like this, and here, here I painted a picture of it, let me put it on my wall, there's my life, and that's the way it's going to be for the long haul. And it's like, not really, because it's changing all the time. And I think when we allow ourselves to breathe into the idea that following our path is a daily thing that we can do throughout our lives, and that there's never a point in our lives where it's like, well, you didn't follow your path. The end, close the coffin, roll the credits. So now I want to talk about the fact that sometimes it feels scary to follow your own path. You're like, how do I know what it is? What if I fuck up? What if I ruin my life? What if by just listening to my inner voice I completely fuck everything up? Well, you're gonna do that either way. You're never not gonna fuck everything up at a at certain times in your life. I mean, that's just the way it is. I think we look at these things, we're like, I'm gonna fuck up my life forever. Nope. That's not how it works. Right? You fuck up majorly, maybe, and then if you're still here, you have another try and another try and another try. And every day is a new day. Every day you get to wake up and say, it's a new day, so I'm gonna make a choice to do this or that or the other, and if you screw it up, you got another day. And I know people say, only you have only one life and go for it, and I am for that, and that's why even why I'm talking about this. But I also feel like we have to give ourselves grace because I personally have been paralyzed by my own perfectionism. And so if you are someone who doesn't give yourself a break and doesn't give yourself tolerance and doesn't give yourself a chance to fuck up, and thinks that if you fuck up, that's it. This is for you. That was me. I I would fuck up when I was following my path or when I didn't, and I listened to other people. And either way, if there was a fuck up, that was it. I was like, that's it, I ruined everything. And I would get into like a depression for like months. I'm not exaggerating. Uh sometimes it was weeks, sometimes it was months. And um I think that one of the most wonderful things that we can learn, just as people in general, is to start to learn to give ourselves grace, to give ourselves a fucking break. Because we are out here just fucking, you know, pants in the wind. I mean, we are just like, let me see what I get when I do this lasso. We don't know. We don't know. And I was paralyzed to try in so many ways when I was feeling my path. Oh, that's kind of weird. What a how how are people gonna take it and you know, being in the creative world? I was like, oh, people aren't gonna not gonna have an audience for that, or uh, you know, a producer won't want to, you know, get involved in this because it's so like, you know, even what I'm doing right now, spirituality and comedy. And, you know, I'm I know I'm not alone because I have come across now, you know, some other folks doing that, which I love, um, and have started it before me and I like didn't even know about. But the fears of am I gonna be palatable, digestible? Will I be accepted? Will I belong? Will I get some sort of guarantee that if I follow my path, my own path that I forge and make it up as I fucking go along, will that guarantee me success? Will that guarantee me a sense of belonging? Will that guarantee me a sense of accomplishment? And those are all feelings. So how could any event guarantee you a feeling? How you will feel when this happens, how you will feel about how people are looking at you about what you achieved or didn't achieve. Still your feeling. And you know, I am a four on the Enneagram, so I freaking love feelings. I am a feeling whore. I'm a whore for feelings. I mean, I just love being in my feelings. I'm very dramatic at times. And I also feel that feelings are sacred because they are messengers about what is happening for us, what we're believing. They're telling us what we're believing about ourselves. They're telling us when when we're in an environment where it's causing us a lot of pain. I guess what I'm trying to say is that following your path is a daily experience. And it's uh based on so many things about your feelings, about your inertia, about a drive, something you can't get out of your mind. I have to do this, I have to try this. For me, it was a drive to get to where I am now, to get to where I would love to go. Um, and that is to be able to make a living from my work. But I have dedicated myself to my heart's path. Have I made five million mistakes? Mm-hmm. Yep. Have I had a perfect financial experience from it? Mm-mm. No, girl, I have not. But does it make it less fulfilling in my heart and soul? No, it doesn't. Forging my own path is scary. Even while I'm still doing it right now, while I'm talking, I'm currently forging my own path by this podcast and by what I'm sharing. Is it scary? Mm-hmm. Is there a guarantee that it's gonna make me rich or make me well known or fulfill all my dreams? Mm-mm. Nope. And so far, still in my guest room, still making podcasts in my guest room. But the journey of making this podcast changed me exponentially. Forgive me for not remembering who said this because it's just coming into my head right now. The point of any accomplishment or goal is what it makes of you while you are achieving it. And I am not a perfect person, y'all. I am a messy motherfucker. And I can be neurotic. And I it I that's actually one thing I loved about something that Ramdas, spiritual teacher Ramdas, said it was like he would talk about all these um enlightenments that he had. Then he would see an old friend from growing up and they'd say, You're the same you've always been. And that would blow him away. You know, he you have all your neuroses, they're still there, right? But it does, I feel like I have uh like kind of evolved uh from within myself outward. I don't know if that makes any sense, but and it was through the experience of saying, I have this dr this dream or I have this vision for my life. And it took me years to even find out that this, what I'm doing right now, was part of my vision. I had to keep going. Sometimes it's like you're walking in the darkness, and you're like, I'm keeping going because I have this vision or this drive or this feeling deep in my heart that this is where I'm supposed to go. But like I'm walking right now in the fucking darkness. And so many times I'm saying to myself, Do I know what I'm doing? I really don't know if I know what I'm doing right now. Am I fucking up? I mean, it's a lot. When you're following your own path, it's a lot. But I believe that it has fulfilled me in ways internally and in my personhood and in my soul, that on a good day when I'm not bogged down by my neuroses, because I still struggle with that, you know, and depression, I still struggle with that. But there are moments in my life where I in even just talking about it right now, where I say, wow, wow, what what where I was and where I am now, I mean, you just there's not there's not enough money in the world that could make up or that could be better than this. Even though I have my own problems that I have to deal with, I have difficulties in my life, a lot of difficulties in my life, as we all do. And we go through stages and we go through segments of our lives that are more shitty than others. I'm in a shitty one right now, just FYI, but I'm still able to know that following my own path was something that was driving me so intensely that I had to keep going. And so what I'm wanting to share is that it's all messy, dude. It's all messy. So I found some really cool quotes about the beauty of following your own path, and I wanted to share them with you. So I'm gonna do that right now. E.E. Cummings said to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. And what I hear in that quote is to learn to operate from your own operating system. And I'm gonna tell you it's scary. At first it's scary, and then it does become a natural inclination. That has been my experience. Do I still have moments of doubt? Do I still go, oh my gosh, which way should I go? Which avenue? Do I still think at times I fucked everything up? Mm-hmm. Yup. I certainly do. And I know for who I am and what I know about myself, that I have done my best to follow the deepest inner part of my being, my soul, my inner compass as best as possible. And as I have followed it, I have let go of the things that were obstacles to me being able to continue to follow it, and then letting go of the obstacles that would allow me to even go further with it, and then letting go of the obstacles that would cause me to not be able to sustain being on this path. Again, I'm gonna say it. I'm following my inner compass to the best of my ability. It has been a healing journey, it has been a letting-go journey, it has been a journey of coming face to face with my deepest fears and pains. And even when I'm having a shitty day, I feel like myself having a shitty day. So Carl Jung, who was huge into what he called individuation, which means individuating from your environment in which you were developing as a young child and becoming your own person with your own inner compass, and he said there is only one way, and that is your way. There is only one salvation, and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to come will be created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is you. And now I want to talk about where we feel like we haven't listened to our own inner compass or even found where and what our inner compass is. And it is so easy. First of all, I just want to say we love finding reasons to beat ourselves up. We are so fucking good at it. If before I started doing all this healing work I could have made a living by beating myself up, I would have been a billionaire. Anyway, I have to say that because, you know, it's always our go-to, right, in this world where there's so much comparison and there's so many people on the social media. I make a billion dollars a day on social media making TikTok videos, or I have an Instagram account that I just lie around and s in sunbathe and drink cocktails while I make millions and millions every week. And then you're like, why can't I do that? I have to go to my frickin' stupid job that I frickin' hate. And why can't I make a million dollars a week? You know? And you know, I don't know the the validity of what these people are saying, and maybe some of them are telling the truth. But, you know, we all have our own path. We can't get into that. We all know what our obstacles are and what they've been. And we know our own story. We know the things that we have overcome and how much effort it took to. Overcome them. We know that. No one else knows that. We may have people around us who are close to us, who love us, and they may know a lot about us, but they don't know all of it. Even someone who says, I know you better than you know yourself, mm-mm. Mm-mm. Red flag. First of all, I would never say that to another person. How presumptuous. I know you better than you know yourself. Well, what an asshole. So if anyone's saying that to you, mm-mm, just like don't even pay attention to that shit. Because nobody knows you better than you. Even if you're confused, even if you feel lost, even if you don't know what the fuck to do with yourself, deep down, you know your experience better than anyone on the fucking planet. And I'm telling myself this too. Because I still get caught when the people in my life are like, oh, I don't know if I would do this, or I don't know if I would do that. Again, I'm not saying don't take suggestions or advice or listen to people's uh insights or perspectives. You know, maybe they've been through an experience that you're going through. And so they want to share, you know, hey, I did this and it really helped the situation, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it's got to be you who makes the decision based on everything you know, all the information you've received from your uh own research or from the people that have uh, you know, shared their thoughts with you. And in like again, even if with the best intentions, they still don't know what's best for you. Isn't that fucking scary? Isn't that so fucked up? Wouldn't it be so much better if we could just listen to everybody else and be like, everybody knew exactly what was the perfect thing for my life, and so it turned out just perfectly because everyone just led me in the right direction. I didn't have to think for myself, and I didn't have to go down into the depths of my being, and I didn't have to be like, I'm gonna free ball it and just go out into the world and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, and I'm just trying this thing that feels like I really want to try it, and I have this other idea about this other thing, so I'm gonna try that. And even that is part of the path. Switching up. Who cares? It's your fucking story, it's your experience, okay? If you feel like you want to try something and you're like, no, this is like I I I wanted to try this up to the point where it taught me what I needed to know to try this. There's nothing wrong with that. It's your fucking life. We have been so conditioned to believe that the sign of a good life is money in the bank. Now, is having freedom to do whatever the fuck you want with your own time literally the greatest gift in the world? Yes, it is. Can money do that? Mm-hmm. It can, and it does. So, yes, I'm not putting that down or I'm not saying that that is not a wonderful, wonderful goal. But deep within you, finding out who you are, connecting with yourself, learning to love all of yourself, and that is a journey that never ends as well, of course. Learning to give yourself grace, learning to just start nudging yourself toward that bing that you know you want to try, right? It's baby steps, motherfuckers. So that was part one of my discuss on forging your own path, following your heart, following your path. And I have more stuff to say about it in part two, so join me for part two when it comes out, baby. Anyways, as always, this has been the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast. My name is Suzanne Sowell. Thank you so motherfucking much for listening, and I'll see you on the next one.