I have been pushing.
Pushing my body through long days of construction. Pushing my mind through business decisions, strategy, conversations, planning. Pushing my nervous system past what it can gently hold. And telling myself it is my duty. Telling myself it is growth. Telling myself it is necessary.
Then I put myself on an early flight to save money. I moved from car to plane to another vehicle. I felt the motion in my body. That subtle disorientation that starts physically and then slowly seeps into everything else. I sat and waited for hours. I had a cider. Then another later. And somewhere in that stretch of movement and waiting and stimulation and exhaustion, something slipped.
Not just my balance in the moment. My balance in life.
There was a quiet realization that I have been out of rhythm. Not slightly. Not temporarily. But deeply, structurally out of rhythm. The kind where you keep going because you know how strong you are, but you stop listening to what your body and your spirit have been asking for.
And so I let go.
I stopped managing how I was perceived. I stopped holding everything together. I let my hair down. I let my body move the way it wanted to move. I danced. I sang. I connected. I watched people closely. I felt everything more vividly. I said things that were real. Maybe too real for some. Maybe not timed perfectly. Maybe not softened in the way people expect.
And I did not try to fix it.
That was the moment.
Not the dancing. Not the conversations. The moment was realizing that I do not need to constantly calibrate myself to keep everyone comfortable. I do not need to over manage my energy so that I never disrupt anything. I do not need to be the one who holds the emotional center for every space I enter.
There is a power in not giving a fuck that has nothing to do with being reckless.
It has everything to do with being honest.
Honest about where I am. Honest about what I need. Honest about the fact that I have been giving more than I have been receiving. Honest about the reality that my life, if I am lucky, could be long. And also could not be.
I am fifty years old. Some people in my family have lived past one hundred. I could be halfway through. I could be near the end of something I do not see coming. Both are true at the same time.
And that clarity does something to you. For you. Our dear friend Gill brushed up against that same clarity and chose to take action!
That kind of clarity makes you look at your days differently. It makes you feel the cost of imbalance. It makes you question why you are working so hard to build a life that you are not fully inhabiting.
I know what I love.
I love immersion coaching. I love deep connection. I love watching someone shift in real time. I love building something that actually matters. That is not in question.
What is in question is how I live while building it.
Because if the way I am building it strips me of pleasure, strips me of spontaneity, strips me of my own aliveness, then I am not building my life. I am postponing it.
This weekend reminded me of something simple and confronting.
I know how to live well. I have done it before. I have felt it in my body. The balance of movement and stillness. Work and play. Structure and freedom. Giving and receiving.
And I drifted.
Not because I am weak. Because I am capable of pushing far beyond what is sustainable.
So now I return.
Not with a dramatic overhaul. Not with a rigid plan. But with a decision.
I am designing my life again. Intentionally.
An ikigai life. A day I would not trade. A life that feels like a full expression, not a constant effort to get somewhere else. The version of my life that feels like a two hundred million dollar day, not because of money, but because of how it feels to be inside of it.
And part of that design includes a deeper embodiment of not giving a fuck.
Not in a way that disconnects me from people. In a way that reconnects me to myself.
Not caring about every opinion. Not softening every edge. Not apologizing for being in a season of expansion, contraction, expression, or rest.
Letting myself be seen in motion.
Letting myself take up space.
Letting myself be human.
If I invite anyone into this, it is not to follow me. It is to ask yourself a simple question.
Where have you been over giving?
Where have you been over controlling?
Where have you been performing instead of living?
And what would shift, even slightly, if you loosened your grip and stopped giving a fuck in the places that are quietly draining your life?
I am walking this now. Not perfectly. Not cleanly. But honestly.
And that feels like the right place to begin again.
Today is Aryauna, my youngest daughter’s 22nd birthday, and also the beautiful Niki Bee’s birthday.
May you both be held in a year that meets you fully.
May your paths open in ways that feel both exciting and deeply right.
May you trust yourselves more than ever before, even in the unknown.
May your bodies feel safe, your hearts feel expressed, and your lives feel like something you are consciously creating, not just moving through. Happy birthday to my baby girl and to you my dear little Bee;) From my heart to yours, Mama Joy
Unscripted Joy 