As we move along our unique paths toward the most beautiful life we can ever live, it is easy to be in high spirits when things are flowing beautifully, and the signs of manifestation and our progress are ample and clear.
It is a completely different story to stay in that high vibration of trust and inspiration when there are no visible signs of progress, though. Let alone when we seem to be going backward.
As I am writing this, I am having one of these moments. Typically, I tend to be rather impatient when it comes to manifestation, often perceiving that it takes too long for me to “get there”.
The last two nights, my sleep has been troubled, which is highly unusual for me. I usually sleep like a small child, falling asleep the moment my head hits the pillow and waking up feeling refreshed, renewed, and inspired.
But these past couple of nights I have woken up a number of times with a vague memory of having had disturbing dreams.
And even now as I am writing this, I can hear the critical voice of the ego calling for my attention.
“What’s the point?” it says. “Who do you think you are to believe that you can become a professional writer - you are delusional. You are a nothing and a nobody, with nothing of value to offer.”
These are the moments when we need to come back to our spiritual foundation for strength and courage to keep moving forward - even when both inspiration and motivation are absent.
A Benevolent Loving Presence
Every idea, vision, or dream we ever have is a Divine seed planted within us, and like any seed in nature, it has a life of its own.
The same evolutionary impulse that causes the cosmos to continuously expand, that causes the apple seed to unfold into an ample apple tree, that makes species evolve, sometimes even into a completely new species.
That same evolutionary impulse runs through our dreams and visions. Runs through us.
Underneath it all, we have this Benevolent Loving Presence that is all there is. That is fully and evenly present everywhere and always.
That cannot ever be against itself, that cannot ever go against its nature. That is always expressing itself perfectly.
And whose deepest desire and highest intent it is to come into ever greater and grander expressions in, as, and through all of creation. I.e., you and me.
Everything is for us
In that sense, we live in a friendly universe that eternally is on our side, forever guiding, leading, and moving us into expansion.
That is eternally sourcing, fueling, and funding us as we give ourselves permission to continually step outside our comfort zones, into the unknown.
So we may reveal more of who and what we are, which ultimately is a unique, perfect, whole, and complete emanation of Spirit.
While it may sometimes feel like God is on our case, or that Life is against us, our setbacks and challenges are nothing but stepping stones.
They are gifts and blessings of transformation, inviting us to release and let go of our disempowering stories, beliefs, judgments, opinions, habits, and identities.
Inviting us to release and let go of who we used to be so that we may become who we need to become to allow for the next iteration of who and what we are to emerge.
"The universe always has your back. When you align your mind with peace, you start to see that every circumstance is a gentle nudging toward grace." - Gabby Bernstein (Author and speaker)
In my case this morning, what bummed me out when I opened my laptop and logged into my Substack dashboard to draft a completely different post was seeing a decrease in subscriber count.
Although the number of subscribers to The Path to Freedom Blog is steadily growing, it is obviously not the first time it has dropped. Sometimes the drop is significant; sometimes it's slight. This time it was only a small decrease, but for some reason it hit me really hard.
My heart sank, and as I wasn’t feeling too inspired to begin with, what little inspiration I had dissipated like morning dew in the hot summer sun.
What we can perceive is infinitesimal
This was one of those pivotal moments where I had to pull really deep and hard to muster up the discipline to do what I had said I would do - draft a new post.
It is so easy to give up when we experience seeming setbacks. It is so easy to quit the moment it gets hard. To judge by what our physical senses inform us, which is nothing but a snapshot image of this exact moment in time.
However, while it is easy to succumb to negativity, in those moments, we need to remind ourselves that what we can see and hear gives us only a tiny fragment of the totality of what is really going on.
It tells us nothing about the bigger picture. It tells us nothing about what is happening behind the scenes.
I remember how my earliest teacher on this path, Bob Proctor, used to say: “Perhaps something needs to happen on the other side of the globe for the conditions to become right”.
In other words, we never have the full story. We never even have most of the story.
And yet so many of us judge and draw, often negative, conclusions based on what we can see and hear.
It’s like covering up every piece but one on a chessboard, and then making our move. Obviously, we would be able to make a move, but without seeing the entire chessboard and all the other pieces, it would be impossible to know which move was most strategic.
Pause and Reset 🧘🏾♂️
Let’s take a moment here to pause and reset. I invite you to close your eyes, bring a gentle smile to your face, and take three deep, conscious breaths with me: Breathe in... release. Breathe in ... release. Breathe in... release.
I invite you to say out loud or in your mind: All is Well. Something Wonderful is Always Happening. Everything is Working for My Highest Good. Perfect preparation and unfolding are always happening.
“I don’t quit when I get tired, I quit when I am Done”
A few months ago, I went with my son to his gym. Along the walls were all these inspirational quotes to help whoever was working out push their limits.
They were all inspiring, but one really stood out. It said, “I don’t quit when I am tired, I quit when I am done”.
I loved it and immediately adopted it as a slogan in my own life, though I refined it slightly to align more with who I am: “I don’t quit when I feel like it, I quit when I am done”.
I don’t remember if it was Napoleon Hill or Wallace Wattles who, after studying a large number of successful people, concluded that the most important trait in reaching one's goals was perseverance.
Not skills, not talents, not resources, not intelligence, not background. But the one who endured the longest.
Angela Lee Duckworth's research across diverse high-performing groups proved that "Grit"—defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals—is a far greater predictor of ultimate success and fulfillment than innate talent, raw intelligence, or momentary motivation.
If we let what we feel like in any given moment, which is often caused by our external conditions and circumstances, determine our choices, we will never get far.
One moment we may be super inspired and motivated, then we hear or see something (like I saw the drop in the number of subscribers), and inspiration and motivation go out the window.
But as unwavering and unstoppable spiritual warriors, we don’t quit when we no longer feel like it. We quit when we are done.
That is what unwavering and unstoppable means. Literally.
“You don’t need motivation, you need discipline. Motivation is feeling like doing it. Discipline is doing it even when you don’t feel like it.“ - Alex Hormozi (US entrepreneur and investor)
How do we know when we are done?
This brings us to the paramount question: How do we know when we are done?
How do we know when we have achieved what we wanted to achieve?
In Steve Siebold’s book “How Rich People Think,” he states that most self-made millionaires have “highly defined goals with do-or-die deadlines,” while the average individual has “loosely defined goals with flexible deadlines.”
In other words, we need to make our goals and dreams quantifiable, measurable, and time-bound.
We need to be super clear on what we are moving towards. The clearer we are, the easier it will be to discern what moves us toward and what moves us away from the good we wish to experience.
In my case, moving toward my simple, peaceful, and quiet life, unbound by time and place, while stepping deeper into my Dharma, I have two quantifiable first-stage milestones:
To reach 100,000 subscribers to the Path to Freedom Blog
To make a minimum of $8,000 a month in passive income.
Both of these milestones allow me to make conscious choices as to what I need to say Yes to and what I need to say no to.
For instance, writing two ever-increasingly high-quality posts each week is something I need to do, with deep emphasis on quality rather than quantity.
Engaging in activities that keep me from being present enough to write these articles is something I need to say no to.
Our Dream Needs to Be Outrageously Impossible
Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, one of the world’s most premier entrepreneurial coaching companies, encourages all his clients to set 10x goals for the simple reason that, to reach these goals, they need to eliminate about 80% of what they have been doing up until this point.
To go ten times from where they currently are, they cannot keep doing what they have been doing. Not even 10 times more of it.
To go 10x, they need to allow a completely new way of being and doing to emerge.
Dan states that this actually simplifies their lives to a great extent. When they remove 80% of their non-effective activities, their lives get more focused and laser-like.
They no longer face an endless number of choices and options, since most of them won't get them to 10x.
Only a very small number of choices and activities would allow them to scale 10 times, and these are the ones they need to focus pretty much all of their time and attention on.
"I tell people I'm too stupid to know what's impossible. I have ridiculously large dreams, and half the time they come true." - Debi Thomas (Olympic figure skater)
In other words, when we have outrageously impossible dreams and visions for our lives, we're not making our lives more complicated; we're simplifying them by eliminating many lesser choices and options in favor of the ones that really serve us and move us forward.
I heard someone say once, “No one exceeds their wild expectations… unless they begin with some wild expectations.”
When we shoot for the stars, our brains (and the Sacred Laws) immediately go to work finding the way forward, and the more laser-like we are, the more the ways and openings forward will reveal themselves to us.
Decades of research by goal-setting pioneers Edwin Locke and Gary Latham confirm that setting Outrageously Impossible goals forces the brain to cut through low-value distractions and streamline focus onto only what truly matters.
We really, really need to want it
To circle back to where this post started, about overcoming resistance and lack of inspiration and motivation, we need to make absolutely sure that what we are going for is something that we truly want.
As Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith sometimes says: “We need to want it more than an man whose hair is on fire wants water.”
Many of us go for what we think we should, or what we believe others think we should.
For many years, recording transformational audio and video content was a main part of my business, and I still earn a nice passive income each month from all those hundreds of hours of courses, talks, and meditations.
But after listening to Dan Sullivan a few weeks ago, I realized that while recording all that content is what has brought me here, continuing to create content that way was no longer the path forward.
It would not take me to the unbound-by-time-and-place life I want to live.
Realizing this made it easy for me to release that part of my life and identity and pivot to writing instead.
What I have realized since then is that this pivot gives me the dual benefit of stepping deeper into the life I want while doing something I absolutely love.
Writing has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember, but because of a number of disempowering stories and beliefs, I never even considered making it my way of life until now.
To live our most beautiful life, a life of joy, happiness, and fulfillment, we need to go for what we truly want. Not what we think we should. Not what we think others think we should.
But what we want. What our hearts want.
Every moment is a new beginning
This is the beauty of having this human incarnation. We actually get to choose.
An acorn cannot choose to become anything but an oak tree. A fox cannot wake up one day and say, “Hey, I am gonna be a lion today.” A tulip seed is destined to become a tulip and nothing else.
But we, having our independent minds, can make any choice in any given moment, which allows us to choose the trajectory and destination of our lives - fully and completely.
Nothing holds us captive or bogs us down in any kind of experience other than the limited stories and beliefs we buy into.
Every moment offers a new beginning, allowing us to make a brand-new choice. To take off in a new direction.
Not knowing how to do it is not a valid excuse for not going for it.
"If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes—then learn how to do it later!" - Richard Branson (British billionaire entrepreneur)
None of us knew how to walk before we learned it. None of us knew how to read before we learned it, or speak, or sing, or whatever the case may be.
There have been so many times in our lives when we didn’t know how to do something, but by setting the intention to learn it, practice, and repeat it, we eventually did.
We have done it before, and we can (and will) do it again.
All it takes is us being clear on what we wish to experience, saying yes to it, and then going for it. Give it our all and our best, and never quit until we are done.
Spirit will handle the rest.
🎧 Complimentary Audio Treat
The complimentary audio for this post is a talk called “Let Us Not Wait, Let Us Trust And Get Moving”
If you enjoyed this audio, I invite you to check out the Path to Freedom App right here on Substack.
It is the home of all of my recorded content: hundreds of hours of courses, talks, meditations, prayers, and much, much more.
Transformational Invitation
My invitation today is that whatever Outrageous Impossible Dream you may have about your most beautiful life, you go for it.
Say yes to it. Commit to start moving in the direction of it, even if you don’t know how to do it.
Once you say Yes, and once you start looking for the way forward, the way will begin to reveal itself.
By biological and spiritual law.
As always, I would love to connect with you, so leave a comment below or simply drop in and say hi in our community Chat
If this article resonated with your heart and soul, I would deeply appreciate your support in expanding this blog—whether through a financial contribution or by sharing it with someone you know who might benefit. All support is received with deep gratitude.
Until next time, my fellow Spiritual Warriors, I bless, bless, bless our days, and I bless, bless, bless our ways. Knowing that All is Well, that Something Wonderful is Always Happening, that Everything is Working for Our Highest Good, that Perfect Preparation and Unfolding are Happening, Now, Always, and Forever.
With much love and many blessings,
Namaste ✨💜🙏🏾
daniel roquéo