Follow The Aliveness – It May Lead To Chocolate! (Or France)

Every single being has an amazing unfathomable gift that only meeting life head on will reveal… Follow the aliveness.

- Mark Nepo, Oprah’s Supersoul Conversations

I love this phrase from Mark Nepo - follow the aliveness. 


I wonder, do you know what he means?  I bet you do. 

I bet if you pause for a minute, you know what “aliveness feels like in your body.” 

I often call my version of it “green and blue music,” a term that emerged from my analysis of a Georgia O’Keefe painting by the same name - way back in a college art history class. 

Sometimes aliveness hits us right in the face, like cherry trees in Spring time.  It’s hard to miss. But often, I find that aliveness shows up in little tiny clues.  Clues that show you the way to your own special version of being alive.


We have actually to follow one to get to the next one. 

Often we want to see the whole way mapped out for us.  But it’s pretty rare that life works that way. More often, we just get the next little hint.

Reflecting on this journey to aliveness reminds me of the amazing Easter basket hunt my dad used to create for my siblings and me when I was a kid complete with rhyming clues and always, at some point, a map that included embarrassing instructions. 

Something like “Go out in the front yard and run around the car yelling “Go Giants! (we were Eagles fans)” or requiring the basket hunter to yell loudly something along the lines of “my dad/mom is the most amazing person in the world!!!” while dancing around in a circle or bowing our heads to the ground.

But I digress…my point isn’t that you must be embarrassed to find your aliveness, though I suppose that is often part of the journey.  

My main point is that in this Easter basket hunt, we didn’t get a map at the beginning that already had the whole route on it.   

We got one clue to start, a riddle usually, and we had to follow it to the next clue… and the next.  Sometimes we thought we’d figured out where the riddle was pointing, but when we got to the spot where we expected to find the next clue, it wasn’t there. 

So, we had to back up and try again.

Often that’s what it’s like for us as we seek to find our way to lives of joy and impact – or, to say it another way, to find our way to our own personal version of ALIVENESS.  

You have to follow one little clue to get to the next one.  

You have to take a guess at what the answer to the riddle might be.  Then go there.  If the next clue is there, great!  You follow it. If not, you try another idea. No big deal.

You don’t stop.  

And most importantly, you don’t need to tell a story about how not finding the next clue yet means you’re a failure and doomed to a life of suffering and drudgery.  Or that you're not good enough or don't deserve the prize you're going for.

You just try something else and see what the results are.

In life, one of the signs that you’re on the right path towards your most fulfilling and impactful life is a felt sense of joy.  

It might just be a hint. 

But if you start to practice noticing where that joy is and following it, you’ll get another hint. Then you follow that one. And soon, it seems as if the hints start shimmering a little more brightly.

And so does your life.

At various points in my life, I’ve literally tracked my joy in what I call a time/joy diary.  It’s one of the first practices that I recommend in Feel Better. Do Better. (BTW Do you have your copy yet?)

In a nutshell, to do this practice you track your day by hour and activity and also record the emotions you feel while doing that activity. 

But you don’t even have to be that systematic to start following joy-clues.  

You can just do that one tiny thing that’s been nudging at you and then notice what happens.  

Here’s an example from my life: 

A couple of years ago, when I worked for a big university, I felt a nudge to take over the weekend dog-walking duties.  Not very big or exciting right? You could even say it was a chore. But I had to do it one day when my husband was out of town and I found that it gave me a little hint of joy – because it got me out of my bed and connected with nature in the early morning when the world is still pretty quiet.  There was some ALIVENESS there for me.

So, I committed to doing it regularly.

Just to see where it led me.

Not long after that, I followed a much bigger nudge which took me to France for a leadership conference with only two weeks' notice, which led to several years working with the amazing Makenna Held, which was transformative not only for my leadership, but for my finances, friendships, business and even my sex life!   Eventually (as you know if you’ve been around here for a couple of months), it also led to me and my husband being on the show La Pitchone: Cooking in France, which was an adventure I never expected!

Some hints call for tiny action.  

Some hints call for big craziness – like heading to France with less than 2 weeks' notice and at the same time when your husband is also at a conference and you have a kid etc.  But somehow, I knew I needed to go.  

I’ve learned to trust that knowing - most of the time (still human over here!)  But it didn’t start with France.

It started with paying attention to tiny, tiny clues.  And following them.

One clue leads to the next.  And at the end, who knows? There might be chocolate – or something even better.

So that’s my invitation to you.  Follow the joy.  Follow the ALIVENESS.  One clue at a time.  
 

Speaking of chocolate, I love the woman-owned, aliveness-filled chocolate business Vosges,  Reply to this email and let me know your story of following aliveness this week (or where you got stuck).  The first two people to respond will qualify  to receive one of my favorite love-vibration-infused Vosges chocolates! Don't forget to include your mailing address!
 

Here’s to thriving  - and equity, and every human on the planet living with full access to the amazing life force energy available to us.

Deb

P.S. Historical research is all about following clues - especially when you care about justice and equity and want to reveal what has been hidden and the voices that have been silenced.   Artist Titus Kaphar does that in his paintings - in which he often takes a well-known portrait and "brings black figures out of the shadows and literally into the picture."  Learn more about his work here in this article and/or check out his website.