The Miraculous Shitshow of Forging Your Own Path series | PT3

If there’s one thing we've learned about forging our own path, it’s this: nobody can tell you what your path is.

Not your parents. Not your friends. Not society. Not your favorite spiritual teacher. Not even that random person on the internet with a suspicious amount of confidence.

In Part 3 of this series, Suzanne explores one of the most important and challenging aspects of creating a life that feels like your own: getting to know yourself. Not the version of you shaped by expectations, roles, fears, or old conditioning, but the real you underneath all of that.

She shares why self-discovery is less about becoming someone new and more about remembering who you've been all along, why reclaiming your life requires learning to trust your own inner knowing, and several practical ways to begin uncovering what is true for you.

Because when it comes to your path, nobody gets a vote quite like you do.

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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We don't know where our hearts will take us. We don't know where our urge or feeling to go in that direction. Why do I keep coming back to this? We don't know where it's gonna take us. We don't know. We don't know. But the choice is trusting yourself or not trusting yourself. Have you ever looked at it like that? I maybe even haven't. It just came out of my mouth. You're listening to the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast with Suzanne Soule, episode 87. Hey you stunning fuckers, and welcome to the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast, where we get into the factacular circus, 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 yum yums I've learned along my journey that have helped me, and that I hope help you too. Okay, so this is part three of my three parter on forging your own path, following your bliss, following your heart, and all that good shit. So let's get into it. Well, that one day at a time. And one grace at a time. We give ourselves grace, we give ourselves breaks. If you are coming from a place where you are really not feeling great about yourself, that is part of the journey of following your path. That was me. A lot of times we listen to these motivational speeches, and they're wonderful. But it's like they're kind of assumed, I think sometimes that we're starting from ground zero. And maybe some people are. Start the actual path. First, I have to have the path to be able to start the path, and then I have the path. And that's been my experience. It was like I had to heal enough until I could be resilient enough to start the path. And don't it wasn't like it was like, here, here, here, here, okay, you are here. Now you can start it. I'm kind of being like silly about that because that's not reality. I mean, it's like all weaving, right? It's all weaving. It's like, oh, this is, you know, your path of creativity and this is your path of personal growth, and they're all intermingling. Like your DNA. Author Carl Jung 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 in you. Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and author, wrote a book called Self Reliance. Check it out. It's wordy. It's, you know, kind of like old timey speak, but it's pretty fucking amazing. He wrote Man is his own star, and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man commands all light, all influence, all fate. Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts, our angels are or good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still. I mean Whoa The idea is to feel like at least you're on the path to becoming and feeling self-realized. Led by your inner compass. Led by the urge within you that keeps saying write that book. Study that course. Go on that vacation. Say hello to that person. Go to therapy. Have a child. But don't have a child. Move to this city. That is all of the experience of the journey of following your own path and your own heart. Messy as fuck but totally fucking amazing. And there is no amount of money, like I have said before, that can overshadow the feeling that you are on the path to being who you are, expressed as authentically as you possibly can in this lifetime and in this world. Again, showing up as half the battle, just knowing that you're taking that little baby step to find out who you are, to find out what your path is. It gives you purpose. It helps you feel your own purpose. It gives you a purpose for your life. It has given me a purpose for my life. Is my life like anyone else's in my community or world? No. But there are other people's lives whose nothing like mine. And I don't judge them for that. I don't say you should be doing it like me. So now I'm going to talk to the judges. Listen, guys, we don't know the battles people are fighting inside. We don't know. And for us to assume that we know what they're up against, why they're living their life the way they're living, it's our own projection because we can't possibly know. Only know here. If you're paying attention to what someone else is thinking, oh my gosh, I'm telling myself this right now. Look inward. I don't know about you, and I'll do this as another talk. Um, but when I don't know why something is happening or why someone behaved or said what they did or is judging me the way they are, um, I literally will start to try to do the math equation of why. Maybe it's because there's this or that or this is happening that. It's like, if you're doing that, Suzanne, look inward. Pluck the beam, darling. Pluck the bean. That is your sign to go in and say, what's happening for me? What am I feeling? Right? We're not going in, we're not pointing the fingers. We're not even pointing the fingers at ourselves. Because that's fruitless. You're not gonna shame your way to success. Again, I don't know who said that. I'm sorry, I'm just talking. I'm just riffing. Just riffing. I've just been riffing this whole time. Oh my gosh. I can't even tell you. Like, I'm kind of blown away. When I first did this, the first day I ever did this and put this camera on and stood in front of this camera, I was like, oh my god, this is terrible. Oh, this is terrible. I don't know what to say. I feel terrible. Oh my god, it was like a shame fest. It was like a shame fest where they were serving embarrassment. Yeah. Anyway, following your own path, the journey of following your own path is a daily thing. And if you feel like you haven't been doing it and you're still here, there's still time. We just don't know. We just don't know. You know, to stay in the wonder of life, like Einstein said, trade in your knowledge for wonder. I think he said that. The wonder to stay in the place of wonder. We don't know. We don't know where our hearts will take us. We don't know where our urge, our feeling to go in that direction. Why do I keep coming back to this? We don't know where it's going to take us. We don't know. We don't know. But the choice is trusting yourself or not trusting yourself. Have you ever looked at it like that? I maybe even haven't. It just came out of my mouth. Which feels like the more lived experiential life? The one where you trust yourself, and even though you're gonna fuck up and make mistakes and bottom out and then get back up and then go on a bender. I'm kidding. No, I'm not kidding. That is part of it. Or following a book or a person or a society or culture and never ever questioning an unexamined life, right? Never ever even giving it a shot. And never ever having the experience of what it even feels like to trust yourself and where that might take you. So you're here. You're listening. One little thing, because the big ones, they're scary to do right now. I mean, I'm not gonna tell you not to, but I think baby steps, like that movie What About Bob, hilarious movie with Richard Dreyfus and Bill Murray, What About Bob? See it? And that's was the mantra. Baby steps to the Bob was afraid to do everything. So the lesson was baby steps, baby steps to the bus, baby steps to lunch, baby steps to the therapist's office. That is it. I know it sounds so there's no guarantee I can't take it. I get it. Baby steps. One day at a time. That is what following your bliss, following your heart, following your own path, forging your own path looks like. It looks like writing down ten things you want to try. It looks like writing out what you want to say to someone. It looks like what schools teach this class. It starts with what other jobs are out there. It starts with where can I go to meet someone? It just starts with that one baby step, just finding out. And if you're like, okay, that was a lot, just okay I did poo ha nine one That's okay, you did the one baby step, you did one thing. That was one thing more than you did yesterday. Following your path, following your heart, following your bliss, forging your own path isn't easy, but so is not doing it. And I'm here to tell you in the times where I have not done it, and the times where I have known I was doing it, on either path, when things got fucked up, I felt more hopeful. Even if it was that teeny tiny bit. When I knew I was following my own path. It's not a huge thing. It's not a giant epiphany. I kept like, where's my moment where I drive off into the sunset and then everything falls off? I'm like, well, that takes about 20 years. For me it did, you know. Thirty, actually, I'm sorry, thirty. I'm like oh my thirty. Transparency counts. Thirty. Almost of a day. So let this be your little nudge. What would it look like? If you just started the journey, like where they say in the South, you started fixing to get ready. To get ready. Be willing to be willing. And you can even say, I don't feel, you know, ready today. Okay, I need tomorrow I'm gonna start, or in a week, I'm gonna do one baby step. And I cannot stress enough to include the journey of getting to know yourself in your journey of forging your own path. It is imperative. It is probably the most important part. And when you are on your path and you're taking that class, or you're going out and meeting those people, or whatever it is that you're doing, painting that painting, you will encounter yourself. And that is another layer of the path. What it makes of you, and what it makes of your connection to yourself. Motherfuckers, like Joseph Campbell said, follow your bliss. Know where your bliss is, and that involves coming down to a deep place in yourself. He says we are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize it yourself. Mm oh, well, why don't you just tell me to do brain surgery while you're at it? There are the takeaways. Whether you are forging your own path and following your heart, you're gonna deal with bullshit. You're gonna deal with failure. You're gonna deal with fucked up shit and you're gonna fuck up royally. That's life as part of being a human being. Number two, if you don't know what your path looks like, that's your path. To find out what is true for you, what you want, what you feel. And it doesn't even frickin' matter if it takes like ten years or two years or one year, depending on where you are in yourself, it is still worth it. It's still worth it. Three. I don't know why I'm numbering these. Progress, not perfection. Right? You don't get the end result, you don't know where you're going. Four, sometimes you're gonna feel like you're just going through the darkness. You don't know where you're going, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what's happening. Keep going. Five, taking advice from others is wonderful. If it rings true in you, if you know they've been through this experience and you trust their opinion. Reading a book, all of those things are wonderful. But just know that no one is going to live your life but you. Like Jimi Hendrix used to say, I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die. Not anyone else. Not to be like, you know, deep like that, but it is. And it's not that dramatic. Number six, it's not that dramatic. Following your heart, forging your own path, it's not that dramatic. Sometimes it can be. But mostly it's daily just daily taking the next step. Taking the next step to get to know yourself, taking the next step to learn to love yourself, taking the next step to get braver, to try the thing, taking the next class, taking the next adventure, putting in a resume out to the next uh company, writing the next page, painting the next painting. That's what it is. Totally everyday blind shit. That is what following your heart looks like. Just with the feeling that you feel connected to yourself and you feel self-led. And that is a huge situation, and it takes a long time, totally worth it. I'm just gonna tell you it is. I did it, you can do it, don't tell me you can't do it, you can do it. In whatever way that looks, we don't know. Take the first step of what you can do today. And then you might see, like Joseph Campbell talks about, doors opening where there weren't doors in the first place. You know? But it is every day, and it isn't just like swish magical. Maybe it is, I don't know, maybe it is for some people, or maybe you have periods of your life where it feels like that. But mostly it's a everyday thing. And you can keep coming back to it. If you're still here, there's still time. I love you so much. Well, that was part three of my chitty chat and my talk about forging your own path, following your bliss, learning about yourself, and all that other good stuff. I hope, hope, hope it really uh helped you, or it gave you some inspiration, or you just, you know, were entertained by what a crazy motherfucker I am, or you were just entertained by my clonery. So I hope this inspired you. I hope you feel delicious and you want to just take that first step, even if it's as they say in the South, fixing to get ready to get ready to do it. And that's cool, right? Just marinate on this if that's what you feel like you want to do. You know yourself. Follow, follow, follow as best you can, and be okay when you fuck it up, right? I love you so motherfucking much, and I just want to say also for the record, I freestyled this entire series, Holy Toledo. That's an accomplishment for me. So that's me following my path, following my bliss, following my heart, and here I am, talking non-stop for a million hours, into the microphone. I love you so fucking much. Anyways, as always, this has been the Spiritual Show Show Podcast. My name is Suzanne Soul. Thank you so much for joining me. And I'll see your gorgeous, stunning face on the next one. Road it, darling, like you've never ruined it before.