A couple months have passed since I left my job, my big resignation day, and landed in my really supportive short-term gig.
And for the first time in a long time. I'm starting to feel a little more like myself.
I noticed that as I'm creating more distance and time away from the job and the environment that had depleted me and frankly warped my sense of self, I'm finally having the capacity to ask: What's next for me?
But that question feels huge. I know I don't wanna go back to anything that resembles what I just left, but I have no idea what the way forward actually looks like.
Then one day, while I'm scrolling through my inbox and an email catches my eye.
It's from my alumni listserv from some women who are promoting a program about taking a more mindfulness-based approach to achievement with the promise of experiencing more joy and ease along the way.
Joy and ease? (laughs) That feels really foreign to me at the moment.
With skepticism and curiosity, I click. I read. I almost close it out. But something, something, is nudging me to go ahead and sign up.
So I enrolled. I receive my pre-work and get this, the first assignment, a 15-minute meditation to meet my future self.
Wait, what? Like, who am I meeting? What is she supposed to tell me? This feels weird and a little cheesy, but something whispered, "Natalie, try it." If you wanna find a new way, you have to be open to trying a new way, right?
So I sat down on the chair, maybe the floor...definitely not a meditation cushion. And I hit play.
Hello, I'm Natalie Domond, and welcome to Tipa Revolution, The Podcast. At this point on the journey, I'm someone who's just stepped off the path I was sure would lead to fulfillment, but didn't. Now I'm searching for what truly will. In this podcast, we explore the power of Tipa, the practice of moving through uncertainty, doubt, fear, and overwhelm toward more alignment, inner peace, and meaningful impact, one intentional step at a time.
This is Tipa Revolution The Podcast and season one is my story.
I'm sitting on the floor eyes closed shoulders back trying to follow the meditation instructions...Whoo, and at first I am resisting. I keep thinking, What is the point of this? I got a lot to get to today. Ouch, my knee hurts. This is uncomfortable. I should have grabbed a cushion. Oh wait, I should be following her voice. And so I start to try to bring my attention to the guided visualization, this meditation.
We're in a park, I'm walking along, and suddenly I'm there. I see myself sitting on a park bench, but it wasn't me now. It was her, me, 20 years from now.
She was glowing and radiant, peaceful, she, I, she I looked fabulous, just oozing with grace and ease and confidence and warmth.
I could just feel myself being enveloped by her aura and drawing me closer to this park bench where she was. She looks over me and invites me to sit down.
Alright, I'm starting to feel this. And then the meditation prompts me to ask her a few questions.
First, what do I need to know to get from where I am to where you are and she turns to me and responds:
Natalie, you are good. You're good. You are enough exactly as you are, that is all that is needed.
You are capable and strong and don't need to live up to anyone else's measuring stick of success, but your own. Stop holding back your thoughts and actions out of fear of what others may think.
You have the self discipline and strength to do what you need to do to live a balanced and whole life where you take care of your entire well-being. You have that ability right now.
I feel myself like start to like quiver and tears coming to my eyes as I'm picking up what she's putting down.
And then the second question is, what do you most remember from the last 20 years? So I asked her this question. And with a big beaming smile on her face, she unequivocally tells me:
It's the laughter and joy and memories with family, children, and friends. A life full of authentic human connection.
Okay, more waterworks. And now it's time to leave. I'm feeling so, so sad. I'm literally weeping. She made me feel so safe and reassured and calm. I want her to hold me and comfort me longer.
This was a calm and a peace I had been longing for for so long.
And we give each other an embrace, we hug each other. And I reluctantly let go.
And I wake up from the meditation or open my eyes from the meditation in tears.
And a stir of emotions.
Later, as I'm journaling about this experience, which is also part of the pre-work assignment, I moved to tears again. I'm finding myself longing for that sense of safety and calm and peace and clarity that I experienced in that meeting with her during the meditation.
And then it hits me.
Wait. I didn't access some alternate universe...some force outside of me. She was me. I have the ability within me to provide that comfort, the guidance, the wisdom, the peace, the answers.
This wasn't just a meditation. This was a moment of reconnection, of remembering, of reclaiming my access to the clarity and wisdom that is always available to me.
I just had to listen. I had to slow down, quiet the noise, create space to tune in, and listen.
I don't know where this will take me, but I think I'm on to something.
Zooming out, I sensed that I was on to something big there, and I was right.
What I didn't know at the time was that this practice of starting to quiet the noise, like, slow down, move through the resistance to slowing down and just creating space to hear my own thoughts, reconnect with my own sort of voice and wisdom and desires and clarity would be the foundation for the next chapter of my life, a radical new way of being in relationship with myself and of discerning the next right steps for me.
This sort of realization and this ongoing practice of finding ways to reconnect with and trust and act on the clarity that comes from within is central to everything.
It's in, so it is the foundation on which everything else was built and has been built over the last decade.
And a few things come up for me that I want to highlight. So first, I see this experience of this initial meditation
just helping me start to rediscover this treasure trove of what I've come to call my internal natural resources, right?
The ability that I have to access all the gifts and capacity imbued in me by my creator to connect with my body and spirit to create and cultivate the calm, the safety, the groundedness that I need to move through and navigate life.
And if I were to communicate with myself at this moment in time about eight years ago, I would just let her know that we forget. We forget sometimes how brilliant, resourceful, capable we are. Our lived experiences and conditioning and deeply entrenched scripts and stories, like, obstruct our access to that knowing.
And so maintaining ongoing connection and access to that as a practice, but it never went away. I just forgot it was there and was out of practice in terms of how to access it.
The second thing I wanna highlight from this is that this is just one tipa that then supported my next tipas.
So starting to reconnect with myself and quieting the noise of other people's opinions and expectations and values helped me to gain clarity around the next steps that were important for me to take immediately to support me on this journey.
And a few steps I took: 1) I largely went off social media. As I started to pay attention to the level of anxiety that would come up, and comparison, everytime I would go online. I started to listen to that part of me that would say, "Just don't do it! You don't need to be online." And that's a form of a boundary that was hard for me at the time, but I went off because every time I would go on the scripts that I'd been running for a long time in my mind would tell me, you're not successful. You know, you should feel ashamed of where you are. All these not nice things.
And as I started to connect with my wiser, grounded, vibrant, radiant self, who was connected to truth. I started to entertain the notion that I didn't have to keep doing things that didn't make me feel good. I knew that I wasn't going to find my next aligned career move or just how to redesign and create a more intentional life, if I was driven by the part of me that was comparing and always thinking I wasn't enough or needed to do more, so going off social media was one really important step I took there so that I could focus on connections and relationships that really nurtured and affirmed me.
And the second sort of tipa I did was to sign up for a 30-day meditation challenge.
So I'm not a meditator very much my identity at this point in time, but the idea was that I was noticing that even just a few minutes of practicing presence and of being intentional about what I direct my attention to was helping me feel more grounded and calm.
So I did these five-minute guided meditations because sitting in silence was definitely not within my capacity at that moment in time, and still isn't, too much, but guided meditations gave my busy brain something to focus on and allowed me to practice the art of coming back to the present moment, so that I could then be with what needed my attention and get clarity from this point of presence, not worried about the future or spinning and spiraling about the past.
To this day, I'm not a prolific meditator, but what this did for me was start to introduce a practice of scanning for pockets and crevices and moments throughout my day where I can bring my attention back to the present and ask myself like, What's going on with me right now? What do I want? What do I need? How my feeling? And from there, I can take my next aligned steps.
My tipas here in this episode really started to pave the way for what became the most important practice of my life.
Slowing down, creating space to tune in and to listen and to start to learn how to trust myself and my wisdom again.
Now I want to turn it over to you to invite you into your own reflection. Feel free to grab a journal or you can consider these questions in your mind and feel free to hit pause at any time.
Question number one: What's one small action you can take to quiet the noise in your own life?
And the noise may sound like other people's opinions, technology distractions, social media, a packed calendar, anything that affects your ability to hear or connect with your inner voice and wisdom.
Number two: What has helped you access or hear your inner wisdom before?
And by inner wisdom, I mean that part of you that is calm, and grounded, and connected to truth.
And question number three: What's one small step you can take today to connect with that inner wisdom?
A few examples may be journaling, meditation, prayer, a walk in nature, music, dance, something else...whatever works for you.
And that is it for today. As a reminder, We have a guide that accompanies this season with the reflection questions from each episode. You can find that link in the show notes.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with someone you love or care about. You never know what your tipa might spark in others.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. Until next time, Tipa Tipa.
