Your aliveness is calling. Do you answer the call?

When I was a junior in college, I went to study abroad in Japan.

We were enrolled at Kansai Gaidai University and being a responsible student, I had signed up for Japanese and Econ classes.

I was quickly becoming fluent in Japanese because I lived with a Japanese family, but I wanted to get better. And Econ was part of my major back in the US so I decided I should get more credits under my belt.

On the first day of classes, I got lost trying to find one of my classrooms.

Instead, I had stumbled into an art studio, where students and their teacher were painting bamboo while sitting on their knees on tatami mats on the floor.

I was in there for just a few moments, but I was completely taken by what I saw.

And in a giantly unexpected act of responsible-student-rebellion, I dropped one of my Econ classes and signed up for a Sumi-e painting class.

I LOVED it! Oh, I loved it so much.

The meditative grinding of the small paint block into water to make the black paint. The way the paint jumped off my brush onto the rice paper. The shapes of the bamboo and cherry blossoms…

I spent hours in the Sumi-e studio most days. By the time flew home 6 months later, I became a pretty decent Sumi-e painter.

You’d think that given how hard I fell in love with this art form, I would keep up with it after I got back to the US.

I did no such thing.

I put the paintings that I brought back in my parents’ basement and the whole idea of painting into my heart’s basement – and shut the door.

Sumi-e painting had absolutely nothing to do with succeeding in college and having a brilliant career in business. That was my plan and I wasn’t about to be irresponsible and waste time on anything that didn’t align with it.

I felt the call to make art and hung up on it with remarkable resolve. I didn’t pick up a brush until 19 years later.

This time, it was another act of rebellion.

It was 8 years ago and I was in a dark place. After overachieving and over-accomplishing in every possible way during the previous 19 years, my neglect of my well-being caught up to me and I had burned out.

I could hardly function. My company was failing, as was my marriage. I felt like a complete failure.

My burnout forced me to take care of myself for the first time in… well, forever. I got more sleep, I rested, I took walks, I did yoga.

Slowly, I began to feel a little better. I didn’t wake up in constant dread. I had more energy.

But that’s where the real work began, although I didn’t know it at the time:

The work on my aliveness.

Because what I recognize now but didn’t know back then is that I didn’t just burn out.

I lifed-out.

I didn’t just undernourish myself physically by denying myself rest and sleep and basic self-care.

I undernourished my being and my aliveness by denying myself doing what felt deeply good to me, what called to me.

Like painting.

It always called to me. But I refused to answer the call because painting didn’t conform to the self-concept I hung onto with my dear life: I was a responsible mom, family breadwinner, and business executive.

Painting was an indulgence I didn’t have time for and actually, didn’t even deserve.

Picking up the brush at 40, after in my eyes, failing at life, was not easy. It was a daring act of rebellion against the story I told myself about the “right way to live” that I had believed for most of my life.

A daring act of saying that I am worth doing what feels deeply good to me — and that I will spend time and money doing it.

Oh, how much my old identity resisted! My brain literally yelled at me as I painted and told me that I am pathetic, that this is what people do who fail at real life, that I was irresponsible for wasting time and money like that when I should be focused on fixing my career.

But I kept going.

Because there was a part of me that had now experienced aliveness and it wasn’t going to give it up again.

There was a part of me that knew that it is only by answering the call that I could not just survive this dark time, but find my way through it to something more beautiful and expansive and wonderful.

I had no idea what that was. And it would take me a few years of stumbling around to figure it out. And a LOT of daring to talk back to my brain as it tried to pull me back into the old stories and beliefs.

But I know one thing for certain: Answering the call to paint wasn’t just part of my healing from burnout, but a giant essential element of unleashing my aliveness.

Because it is only when we honor ourselves as vibrant multi-dimensional human beings, when we align with what feels authentic and deeply good to us, and when we find the courage to give those multiple dimensions expression in our lives, that we can experience that magical feeling of aliveness.

And it begins with daring yourself to answer the call.

Maybe it’s a faint call to stop doing what you believe you should and give yourself permission to consider what feels good to you.

Maybe it’s a loud call to finally begin writing that book you’ve been thinking about for years or start painting or take singing lessons or become a volunteer firefighter.

It doesn’t matter what the call is. What matters is that if it’s coming from deep inside you, it’s real, it’s authentic, and it is a part of you that needs for you to honor it.

Please hear me on this: As long as you deny yourself permission to do what pulls at you, what feels deeply good and aligned, you are blocking your life force.

You’re risking being alive, but being lifed-out.

Maybe it’s how you feel right now: lifed-out. And if you are, I want you to know that it’s better than not knowing that you feel this way. Awareness is hugely powerful…if you choose to take the next step.

To dare yourself to answer the call.

To rebel against the old stories of how you’re responsible for everyone else first. Or how you need to achieve and accomplish a certain degree of success or financial stability first. Or how you’re just not worth feeling deeply good.

You are more than worth it. Aliveness is your birthright — it’s why you and I and everyone is here.

Not to make it through the day. Not to sustain ourselves. Not to get stuff done.

But to flourish with aliveness.

Can you rebel against one of the old stories that caused you to life-out?

Can you begin to fuel your aliveness today?

Can you think of one thing that makes you feel deeply good and do it?

Can you listen in to what’s calling you and answer the call?

You can.

I dare you. But more than that, your flourishing future self needs you to dare yourself!

With love,

Nataly

P.S. If you’re ready to release the old stories and self-concepts and make positive changes to live with greater aliveness, I invite you to join Unleashing Aliveness, my signature small-group mentorship program.

Click here to schedule a no-strings 30-minute call so we can talk about it!