Work/life balance is a thing of the past. We have moved into an era of whole living. The boundaries between work and school, family life and business, our external worlds, and our internal worlds are blurred to the point where we often don't recognize them anymore—certainly not in the way we once did. To this, I say, hallelujah!
At what point did we decide to remove ourselves from being human? Likely at the same point, we decided that once we reach a certain age we must get serious and stop allowing ourselves to play and may only experience pleasure on certain days or in private. When we deny ourselves our humaneness, we seek it out in secret or hold it in until it spills out of us in bursts of uncontrollable chaos.
Believing that we can separate ourselves neatly into sections that show up only in one environment or another is an illusion. We are fully who we are at all times, and the more we allow all parts of us to be present in how we show up, the more authentic our actions are, the more innovative our creations are, and the more conscious our relationships are.
Being fully present does not mean that you are employing every skill and ability you have at all times physically. It means being aware of the full suite of gifts that you have, and allowing all that is actually needed in any given circumstance to come forth regardless of how different your ways of knowing and being are from those around you.
One of the benefits of working in higher education is that you get to see the trends of what is coming in the business world before its peak. I remember many years ago when I started seeing design thinking and sustainability showing up as majors in universities. A few years later, I was working in a corporate setting and attended a professional development conference where design thinking was being presented as a cutting-edge strategy in the workplace. I sat at a table surrounded by eager employees trying to wrap their heads around this concept thinking, “isn't this just common sense?”.
I've always been an innovative thinker—a visionary you could say. In my corporate career, I found much frustration around the idea of innovation and how it was attempted to be implemented in practice. "To truly be innovative, one must employ the imagination as a major player in the process." When attempting to create something new, you must be able to imagine something that does not currently exist. What I often see being called innovation is really a combination of recycling and repurposing of things that are already in existence.
These are great practices for learning to use the imagination, but they are not truly creating something new. If you really want out-of-the-box thinking—get outside of the box. Go out in nature and allow yourself to play. Play is where imagination thrives. In nature, we can get in tune with our humaneness and receive inspiration using all of our ways of knowing.
I have the ability to see potentials. Call it a psychic ability or call it quantum physics—you choose. The way I understand it is I see what is possible. I can read the language of art and understand the meaning of dreams. I can feel both pain and potential in the same space. These are just a few of my ways of knowing. My ways of being include showing up as colorFULL, spontaneous, intuitively guided, harmonious, joyFULL, playFULL, wonderous... I am also highly sensitive and emotionally intelligent.
These have not always been qualities that have fit nicely into the boxes I’ve attempted to exist within. I no longer work in the corporate world or the world of higher education.
I work in the world of higher knowing. This is a world where we employ the wisdom of our souls and utilize divine thinking as a practice. This is the way of the future and the future is now.
I predict that the next trend in the corporate space will be intuition training. It will become the next hot topic the same way EQ training was a must on HR training lists for a while and design thinking was vibrant in professional development spaces even before that. I already see evidence of this through the popularity of network marketing and social media. What does one have to do with the other? While I see them as early attempts that will continue to be refined to meet our ever-changing needs, they are focused on bringing back our humaneness and the importance of connection and collaboration.
We are not returning to our roots, we are evolving into them. I believe it is time for us to evolve forward into our humaneness—to allow all parts of us to be present, and to learn from all of our abilities—to play and imagine, to feel, and to know.
The trends I see in the spaces of spirituality, wellness, and creativity coaching are all about embracing our witchy ways, listening to our intuition, and bringing back play into the most serious adult parts of our worlds. Inner child work, healing our traumas, shadow work—those who are doing this work—these are the conscious leaders that are emerging to carry us forward into our new reality.
In the future, I see a world that looks very different from the one we know now, but it does not resemble the scenes we see in futuristic portrayals that highlight technology and conflict. What I see is something that actually looks more like our human past, but more balanced, harmonious, and supported by technology rather than dependent on it. It is a world where we are empowered internally and honor the ways of others—where we support each other by knowing our own strengths and using them in service to all, knowing that we too are fully supported and able to receive from others in the ways that we need it.
We are reaching a breaking point—the point where a one-size-fits-all mentality is going to crash and burn and what will emerge from the flames is a celebration of our uniqueness. From this place we can do business in a different way, we can educate in a different way, and be in relationship with others in a way that is a reflection of our healthy relationship with ourselves.
My advice for how to navigate this transition is to live careFULLy. Find the tiny things that create a feeling of joy and visit them as often as possible. This is how you live joyFULLy. Listen with your heart. Pause before acting and make sure that when you do it is from a place of alignment with your mind, body, and spirit. Embrace your weirdness and celebrate more! Spend more time getting quiet and allow full belly laughs and ugly crying. Love yourself the way you want to be loved and set exquisite boundaries. Let yourself rest when you need it and show up fully when you do. Stop looking for trends to follow and walk your own path. This is not selfish but quite the contrary. Giving yourself permission to be fully you inherently gives others permission to do the same. When your paths cross, meet there for the time that feels aligned, and then keep moving. Maybe you traveled together for a time and part ways at some point or maybe you continue on together. Either way, be responsible for where YOU are going and allow the rest to be.
When searching for an image to accompany this post, I was drawn to this Soul Wisdom Vista artwork that I channeled in February of 2021. While that artwork and message came through almost a year ago, the message is timely. Creating these channeled pieces are a regular part of my devotional morning practice and I have dozens of them, however, they are not all meant to be shared immediately. Their messages bring me insights personally immediately and through the process of creating them, yet I find that they have a way of showing me exactly when they are ready to show up in a bigger way.
Yesterday, I saw a vision of a light spider weaving a light web in a communication with my soul wisdom. When this post emerged through my journal practice this morning and it was time to transfer it to this medium, the image of this artwork came to mind and the light spider message from yesterday confirmed the choice. It has been many months since I have read this message, and in rereading it today, I know exactly why it showed up today.
I have a collection of these works and their messages on my YouTube channel. Here is the video for The Spider: Awareness of Self. Enjoy!
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