The unlived life.

For as long as I can remember I felt as though within me there was a life I could live.

The unlived life; abandoned dreams, untapped ideas, underdeveloped talent, unrealized potential.

The life I was living; fear, should’s, regret, smallness, grief, sacrificed desires, longing, settling disguised as practicality.

I know firsthand how holding back haunts us.

As Les Brown said, “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered.”

Our unlived lives burn us from the inside if they’re not released.

Despite our trying to avoid them with constant busyness, climbing the corporate ladder, and/or burying them under an accumulation of things, our unlived lives inevitably rise to the surface. …one way or another.

For so long I was waiting for permission, a sign to say “Okay, NOW”.

I was given wake-up call after wake-up call but it wasn’t until I had a tumour and was staring my mortality, lovability, and fertility in the eye, that I committed to answering the callings within me.

It took the potential of me dying to finally start living for myself.

And over a year later I’ll tell you that it’s hard.

I oscillate, I wobble, I doubt, I waver. I’m afraid. I want to compromise, feign otherwise, and give up half the time. I want to stay closed, ignorant, small, numb. I try to pretend I don’t want what I really want.

Wouldn’t that be easier?

But then I remember how I would eat to fill myself, try to busy and distract myself so I wouldn’t hear my unanswered callings, push myself and workout and burnout for approval, and drink as an escape and to finally feel uninhibited.

The easy isn’t easy either.

I was hit with jealousy and triggered by seeing other women living out their dreams.

I knew a bolder, bigger, braver, better version of myself would be a writer, would do her own thing and become a force for good with her own business, and have real conversations with people about what really matters.

When I got honest with myself… I realized I was mad at me.

(In fact, I was mad at me this week. My mastermind will attest to talking me through it this week.)

My jealousy tells me “I want to do it (too)”. Those triggers show me my own wanting, hunger, potential.

I knew I could be that woman. I knew she was inside of me. I knew I had a life that I wasn’t living.

And I think I’m not alone.

We’re all secretly waiting for a reason to finally say, “Okay, NOW” and live the life we really want.

Stephen Pressfield in his book “The War of Art” talks about Resistance; what, ahem, wikipedia defines as a mythical concept that illustrates the universal force that acts against human creativity. Basically it’s the thing between us and our unlived lives.

But we cling to struggle because it gives us a sense of purpose; something to overcome and change. Struggle gives us meaning. And don’t our human minds just love meaning.

I know I sure did and do.

Because if I don’t struggle then it means the death of the Deanne I know.

In order to claim the life I had buried inside of me beneath judgment/stories/should’s/conditioning/fear/shame, I had to kill* the old Deanne and her way of living.

*I could say let go, but kill has much more dramatic flair.

The death of the old Deanne and her way of living is the hard, but fun part.

When you only see the way you live you can’t see outside the limitations, you don’t see the whole big land of possibility of how you could live.

The way I see it is that your unlived life will come out one way or another… and it breaks my heart that most of us wait till we’ve hit rock bottom to change.

If you choose to live it out you can’t not claim your worthiness. This means a middle finger to power hierarchies and control using shame because you stop should-ing, settling, smalling yourself, and accept nothing less than what isn’t most true and beautiful for you.

And once you live your unlived life, you’ll be a trigger, source of jealousy, aka a catalyst for those who witness your journey.

When we see others being who they really are and claiming what they really want, it reminds us that we can live our unlived life too.

You matter, our unlived lives matter, this matters, .

Because “if tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step towards pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. The alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with the junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and the medical profession from top to bottom. Domestic abuse would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, migraine headaches, road rage, and dandruff.” (Stephen Pressfield)

The unlived life becomes the fire that propels us to create lives and a world beyond our current limitations.

I believe “Okay, NOW” is simply a decision. It’s the most important decision you’ll make for yourself, but it’s about something bigger than you.

It took a double-digit number of surgeries for me to realize what really matters and choose to build a life that’s most true and beautiful to me.

A life not dictated by judgments of “should” and “shouldn’t”, what other people think, what’s normal, FEAR, or what I’m told to want.

The life I was waiting for permission to live before my tumour.
The life I was dying to live.
The unlived life that I’m now living.

We all have an unlived life. But some of us take it with us when we die.

When are you going to choose “now” and live your unlived life?

Because I hope you live life and feel more than you think about it and fear, friend.

Pst — NOW,

Deanne

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