692: The Universe is My Suitor

That feeling that life is on your side, that trust that good things are happening to you and for you, that your future is spread out like a loaded banquet table. That's the feeling I want you to have. That's the feeling that we used to have often when we were young, when we were kids, waking up each day, running outside, playing in the sunshine, having a wonderful time, feeling maybe we had. We were young adults getting out into the world, wondering where we'd land. So exciting. What kind of career, who would we partner up with? That feeling. Things are coming together for me. Things are feeling right. I feel supported. That that is what I want you to feel. I want you to feel that the universe is your suitor and that things usually work out right. And that is our episode today. Flow Dreaming still kinda Woo Woo is just what it sounds like. An escape into world of woo. Also a ride into you and how to feel happier, wiser and more self aware in every way. It's your ultimate journey into personal growth and inner power. We'll explore ideas like how your energy self influences the kinds of opportunities you encounter, or how your personal growth can drive your business growth, or even how that feeling of being stuck is really always coming from something else. We just have to figure out what. That's right. We're a dash of woo woo. A sprinkle of self care, a heap of problem solving and pattern busting, and a giant cup of encouragement. We're going to relight so much passion, purpose, self love and confidence in you that you practically stagger. I'm Summer McStravik, your host and welcome to Flow Dreaming. Still kinda Woo Woo. Well my friends, welcome to the Universe is my suitor. Today's episode of Flow Dreaming still kind of woo Woo. And I'm particularly excited about today because my book is officially released today, this very day. This book is the first book that I've written in 11 years. So this is gosh darn special for me today and I want to share with you a bit from it. What we're talking about is, like I said right in the beginning, what if life was on your side? What if you just woke up each day knowing that the good things coming to you far outweigh the bad. That when you are crafting and creating where you want to go next and what you want to experience, and even if that just means trying to get a little energy to want to experience anything at all, you would know still, no matter what, deep inside of your being, life wants me to succeed. Life wants me to grow, become something bigger. Better, finer, more generous, more beautiful. And to do that, I need to be supported. And in fact, I am supported today. I want to share with you something that happens sometimes when we have this relationship in our lives that gets broken. And we're all used to relationships getting broken around partnerships. Sometimes it's with family, sometimes it's that best friend that stops speaking to you. Relationships break all the time. They also form anew. But there's one relationship that never, ever goes away. It was here when you were born, it'll be here when you pass on. It's your relationship with what I wanna call the universe. You might call it your higher power source, God, or even just your future. It's the one relationship you can never leave. It can't get away from you. You can't get away from it. You can be estranged. You can be on not speaking terms, but you're still in it. And it's the one relationship that we often tend to overlook more than any other relationship. Because frankly, people are, you know, tangible. We can reach out and touch them and poke them on the shoulder with our finger, but the relationship we have with the universe is just kind of out there. I don't know, it's loosey goosey. Sometimes it feels like it's not there at all. But the very fact is we are in a relationship with life, not just the objects and things that surround us. That's the most fundamental level of our relationship. I am in a relationship with my microphone right now as I'm recording this for you. I'm in a relationship with my husband, with my. With my dog, with my kitties, with my daughter, my son, my mom. I'm in relationships with all of these things and people. But ultimately there's something else that I am embedded in right now I can't get out of if I wanted to. That's my relationship with life, my greater being, the universe itself, the relationship that doesn't end. So because I can't see it as well as I can see all the physical relationships because it's not embodied, I tend to dismiss it, ignore it. Or when I'm feeling especially crabby, I tend to shoot it a lot of disgruntled and unthankful thoughts, why don't you help or help me? How come this has to be so hard? How come I don't have what I need? If only I had this. I feel like I'm doing it all by myself. I feel like nothing is helping me. Everything is against me right now. You know those kinds of thoughts. Hey, I know we're human, we all feel those. But today I want you to shift. I want you to feel this relationship as if it were the most fulfilling, deep, supportive, nourishing, nurturing relationship that you've ever experienced, far surpassing any kind of relationship you have ever had. This goes far beyond belief in God. This is going to go into a territory where I ask you, show up in this relationship, be part of it, direct it, guide it. I'm not relying on my partner to tell me everything to do in life. My partner and I are choosing together. That's what I want to show you. So what we're going to do is I'm going to take an excerpt, a part of a chapter from my book, the one that just came out today, stuff Nobody taught you 40 lessons from me school to help you stop being miserable and start feeling amazing. And I'm going to share these with you. Now, I might mention a few things like do the prompts or do these questions. That's the material that's in the book itself. It's really a workbook. It's based on Me School, which some of you have heard of. It is the most beautiful self development program for inner power, for learning how to manifest really taking the reins of your life, shifting in new directions. Oh, we do it all. But I took that that whole program and I wrote it out. Well, I wrote some of it out. To be fair, Me School is a much bigger animal than the book, but this is a part of it. It's one of my students favorite parts. So we're going to jump in and just caveat. I'm not familiar if I'm going to be dropping any expletives, but yep, in fact I am. I just saw one. So keep that in mind if you've got little ones or sensitive ears. I use some very sassy language in this book, but it's all to make a point to get through to you. So here we go. Let's jump in. Let me start by asking you to do one thing. Look at your life on par about how many things go right for you in a day. You know, basic stuff. You wake up and there's oxygen in the air for you. Your body works and you can stagger out of bed in same body, in fact, you have a bed, a comfy bed with nice sheets and blankets and you have a place to live and there's food for you, clean water and a shower. You might or might not have work or enough money at this given moment, but you've had both in the past and surely will again. On balance, life is taking good care of you. It's helped you get all these things, and 95% of them are good. Sure, there are some wonky, difficult situations, like the annoying guy who lives above you and who always sounds like he's dragging loud, heavy weights across the floor at 2am or the fact that you need $3,000 worth of dental work and can't afford it. Or your boss who's a micromanaging nitwit exasperating the heck out of you. But on balance, can you say that in your day, every day, more than 5% of the things that happen to you suck donkey balls. And if they do, are those things of your making? Or did the universe force them onto you? I thought so. See, we just pull out that old lack thinking. Too often, we spiral into negativity bias. The teensy black spot on the white paper is what catches our eye. Or the tiny chip in the glass of our otherwise awesome cell phone. But 95% of your day, every day, is good. And 95% of the time, your life is on your side. With you helping you, most of our worries never, ever manifest. And we forget this. The universe does, in fact, support you day in, day out. One of my favorite ways to rebuild trust in life is with what I call the Universe is my suitor exercise. You start by pretending that life, God, the higher power, or the Universe is your suitor. Yes, your loving, wannabe romantic partner, wooing you every day to the best of their ability. And oh boy, does this partner adore you. The thing is, you've been pushing them away for a while. You've been telling them how rotten they are, how they act inconsistently. You're doubting their every move, and you're constantly challenging them to prove that they love you and they're kind of sick of it. In short, you've taken over the relationship with your crappy thoughts and forced them into a wary corner. What do we normally do with romantic relationships in which we don't really trust our partner anymore? We clamp down. We complain and moan. We sift through their cell phone. We brace for the disappointment. We micromanage. We tell everyone what a shithead they are. Or we do the opposite out of sheer embarrassment and pretend we we're the happiest couple in the world. But you don't trust the suitor. Not one bit. The universe is supposed to be your partner, but in reality you've had to jump in and take over the whole relationship just to make it function at all. Let's back it down a notch. Let's say you kind of sorta trust life, but you keep ending up not letting life actually contribute much to the relationship. You trust it, but you trust yourself more. Imagine if this were a date in an ideal world. Your partner would ask you out. You'd say yes. They'd plan a sweet and romantic evening at your favorite spot. They'd remember the flowers, they'd remember their toothbrush. They'd show up to impress and you're impressed. You relax. Someone wants to care for you and you let them. Now let's pretend instead that this jerkwad universe has fucked up more than one time in the past. It has broken your heart and betrayed your trust. It won't marry you. It won't give up on its other partners. And you sit and dangle in the void, feeling your inner worthiness slip away. In fact, on the last date it arrives super late and you'd drunk way too much wine by then waiting for it. On the last date, you saw its phone flash on the table with DMs about a hookup later. Jesus, what a lousy date. But hey, you're stuck with it. You and the universe together for freaking ever. Now what you think? If it can't pull its shit together, I'll pull it together myself? You take its 50% contribution to the relationship and say nope. So here you are now doing everything in your power to tell the universe exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it so it doesn't disappoint you again. If you go on a date, you tell them when to pick you up, what car to drive, what color paint the car should have, how the seat should be adjusted, what restaurant you should pull up to, what you'll order and what they'll order, and exactly when the dinner will wrap up. You do this. Since you don't trust them one little bit, you've snatched their job right from their hands, leaving them powerless and you infinitely unsatisfied. Do you think your partner will be having any fun with you? Or do you think your partner will want to get away as soon as possible? Yeah, that's what happens when you don't trust and share equally with your suitor. You start to get over controlling and tell them you know everything. And unfortunately, a lot of what you tell them sucks since you start lobbing boatloads of lack thinking at them. And if your faith in them is truly, epically ruined, you don't even ask anything of them at all. You give Up. The universe is just a warm body in the ratty armchair of your life. A stale, empty marriage. Nothing more. Let's change this. The date, of course, isn't really a date. It's a way of seeing how little you trust or give your partner a chance to show up strong for you. It's a bellwether for your feelings of hope that when you reinvent yourself, you have a strong and powerful partner at your side who's likewise working tirelessly to shove good things your way. And it's a recognition that your future success or failure is intimately tied to your feelings about whether life or God or source is truly on your side or not. So, again, pretend for a moment that the universe, your suitor, is madly in love with you. They may have drifted or grown silent. They may have disappointed you in the past, but you're gonna be with them for like, 500 more years or something. And right now, they are sitting at your doorstep with a huge bouquet of roses, looking painfully at your door knocker and just hoping against all hope that you'll let them in. They've remembered that they've seriously, madly, crazily fallen for you. They've remembered that you are the best thing that's ever happened to them. And they want nothing more than to make it right. They realize they've never stopped loving you and never will. And let's forgive whatever happened in our past, because obviously we weren't communicating very well, but now we are. Mm, yum. This is the kind of willing partner you want. Think. How does someone who's crazy in love with you act? How do you act when you're falling or refalling in love with them? The issue is that you can't believe that the universe will give you your heart's desires if you can't even believe it would give you basic, unending, pure, steadfast. I love you on your good days and your bad days. Love. It loves you when you're cranky. It loves you when you're happy. It loves you on bad hair days. It loves you when you're feeling like doing nothing but crawling in a hole. And so you remember, the universe loves you. It gives you stuff all the time. It wants to show you off to its friends and family. It wants to make sure you get home safely and that your boss treats you nicely. It talks up your skills and blusters as heatedly as you do when you're complaining about your friend. It's on your side no matter what. Get it? Everything that someone madly in love with you would want for you is now what the universe wants for you, and frankly, what it has always wanted for you. Now, a little caveat. Some of us were raised to think of the universe as God or a parental style figure. Do good and you'll be rewarded. Do bad and you'll be punished. And life has indeed punished and rewarded us based on a prescriptive set of ways to act. And like most parents, sometimes their actions make no sense at all. And we're seemingly punished for doing good, rewarded for doing bad, or just not listened to at all. I need you to remove yourself from this authoritarian model for a moment. God, in the prompts ahead is your partner. I know that can feel freaky, almost sacrilegious, but it's such a freaky feeling that it becomes a kind of blasting torch for your remodeling. And you need a pattern interrupt. You know that crazy sexy, all in hungry feeling you have when you fall in love? That is exactly the feeling I want you to have right now about your future, the universe, and the gifts it's just dying to bring you. Throw yourself in and do this now. That's where I'm stopping. I have some exercises in the book that will help you actually feel, sense and remodel that relationship with the universe. But what I wanted to really get across from you or across to you, excuse me, is that when we shift our perception of our relationship, when we start to acknowledge that life has on par, generally continuously given us good things, that it has never really abandoned us. And the things that we look back and say, well, that's where you broke my trust. That's where you didn't give me what I wanted. That's where I got hurt and you didn't protect me. Those are moments often involving other people, not the universe itself directly hurting you. Sometimes you say, well, it was out of the blue, it was random. It was a mutation in my body. It was an accident. It was the universe taking away someone I love. I want you to again step back. I want you to recognize the web of relationships we're all in. The universe did not do that to you. We are constantly doing things with our universe in tandem with our universe. And I know you might rail against that and say, there are things I definitely do not choose. Summer, what are you talking about? It was forced on me. This random, bad universe made it happen. If you want to stay with that thought, then you will forever be in a very wary defensive position with the number one partner in your lifetime and your infinity of lifetime. It hurts. You reconsider that. You may discover some very different and interesting reasons for the things that have happened to you. You may discover your universe has been there. Your God, your higher power has been there through thick and thin, through everything. And each time it says, I'm cheering for you. I'm not just on the sidelines cheering for you. I'm cheering with you. I'm helping you. I'm positioning you. I'm constantly offering you your next steps. I'm constantly offering you the things you need. And it breaks my heart sometime when you don't even open your eyes to see what I've gifted you, what's right in front of you. But isn't that what we do with actual partners? We give people we love what they need. Like, I'm trying to show you this, I'm trying to help you with this. I'm trying to give this to you, but I can't force you to see it. I can't wake you up from your path of destruction or whatever it may be. And we just sit and we stay with them because we love them and we're just forced to watch them. Don't let your universe be doing that with you. Turn your head around. Open those eyes. What are you giving me right now? What am I supposed to do with this? Hey, wait. Can we do this together? Because my ideal date, my ideal way of crafting a life, going out together tomorrow for the next 24 hours, the next seven days, the next seven months, the next seven years is where I say, hey, I kind of like this restaurant. Universe says, tell you what, I'll make it happen. You say, oh, that's so wonderful of you. Universe says, yeah, hang on, let me get to it. I'll ring them up and make the reservation. You say, that's awesome. I'll come pick you up. We'll go together. Fabulous. We make things in life in tandem. The universe, God, higher power doesn't do everything for us. Then we'd just be pawns, just acting out a predetermined script. Nor do we do everything completely separate, divorced from life around us, from the universe, from all that Is, if that were the case, then what a burden. How could we ever figure out how to do things? Life is crashing all kinds of possibilities into our life, our potential. Every moment. We need our partner out there doing its job, weeding out the things we don't want, positioning in the things we do want so we can say, yeah, this is what I'm going into next. You, partner, tell you what I'm going to decide what we're doing, and you're going to help me pull in the materials to do it, right? I'll draw the blueprints for this house. You go buy the building materials together. We're going to get it done. That's me and my partner. That's when I think of them as my actual romantic partner, sets a lot of things in motion. Because I realize, God, do I trust them. Do I just know they're gonna do good for me? Or am I kind of making all these alternate plans on the side? Like, well, they might screw me over there. They might not bring that to me. They might say they will, but actually not. They might actually totally disappoint me. They might abandon me for someone else. They might, right? And I kind of make all these little alternate, you know, because I'm not really sure that's that relationship you've got one foot in and one foot out of. Where do those relationships go ultimately? So if you refresh yourself, if you play with this concept, and I really urge you, if you don't have the book stuff nobody taught you, go grab it right now. You can get it as an ebook on your ebook reader or your phone even. You can get it as a physical book, you know, just sent to you in your mailbox. And soon it will even be coming out as an audiobook. But in it, I'll help you rehab this relationship, bring it into something that is gorgeous, beautiful, working for you again in your life. It is so fundamental. Imagine having a source power enter your life and say, I am here and I'm not here in a hidden way, in an invisible, like, you just pretend I'm here, but I'm not really here kind of way. Oh, I am here. And you are going to see evidence of it sprinkled in everything, everywhere. I mean, wouldn't you just want to grab that, hug it close, and say, yes, yes, yes, give me more. I want those coincidences. I want those fabulous things to happen for me. I want to know. I want to feel. I've been heard. That's what I want for you as well. Now, we haven't done this in a few episodes, I think, but I think it's time for a little personal update. Yeah, I'm doing little personal updates now. And that's the little music that signals it. I realize that I've been often kind of shy over the years about sharing little bits of me with you, and I did some digging into that, some inner work, and I realized it was because I thought you just would find it Boring. Why would you want to hear about me? I'm not what you're here for. You're here to learn and be taught and open your hearts and minds. But then I realized sometimes we don't adequately or perfectly open our hearts and minds and learn if we don't know who the teacher is. And if you know me a little more, you might know what I'm talking about and teaching a little more. And not only that, but how I got to some of these teachings, what it took inside of me to get here and really going back writing this book, I had to share a lot of very difficult stories that I hope don't upset too many people in my life. But I had to share them so you'd know how I arrived at my ability to continuously reinvent myself. So some of the things I'm gonna tell you are just funny, silly things, and some are gonna be kind of deep stuff. Like, for instance, a couple of you have wanted to know what happened to my pond, which I was talking about a couple of months ago. Yes, I finally got that solved. I have a beautiful koi pond. And it's been a lifelong dream of mine, actually, to have my own koi pond. I know it sounds very exotic. I hand train my koi to eat from my fingers, to eat from my hands. And I get them as little babies and grow them up, and we become friends, and they all have names. I love all animals I have. I have dogs, I have cats, I have koi. I would love to have some ducks and chickens. That's the next frontier I'm nudging my husband toward. Hey, babe, you want to build a chicken coop now? Anyway, so the pond is in great shape and everybody is healthy and thriving. Likewise. I've planned some fun things for myself coming up this summer, including a trip to Bali. And it is not too late, but it is almost too late to reserve. If you want to come with me, just reach out. As of the airing of this show, I don't know if it'll be full, but if it's not, give it a shot. We could probably fit you in. I'm hoping. I think we could. So reach out. Small group of us. Deep healing, transformational work. I'll probably never take a group to Bali again, and I'd love it if you were part of it. Anyway, I'm excited about that because I'm actually taking my whole family, and it gives them a chance to have a beautiful vacation, and it also gives me a chance to plunge my kids into some personal growth in A very sneaky way, because you know how kids are. They're usually the last ones who want to do whatever mom is doing in her kooky world. But now they're going to have to. So that's going to be really fun, and it's something that I'm actually looking forward to. On another note, my summer plans also include digging into a new book and finally finishing those gosh darn Oracle cards that I started about, dare I say, 15 years ago. I think it's almost 15 years. So I have two big projects that I am going to be plunging myself into, as well as, of course, my tomato garden. And this year, I think I finally figured out how to make sure that all my tomatoes don't absolutely die by, like, August. So I'm kind of excited to see if I can get this crop going. Last year, I was so dispirited, I didn't even plant my tomatoes, which is a first for me after having a whole crop of them just succumb to Fusarium wilt. So for any of you who are gardeners, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I love just getting out there and getting dirt stuck under my fingernails and digging and growing food. I'm not the person who cooks the food. My husband does the cooking. I do the growing. We seem to have reached a good compromise in our life at this point anyway, so that's it for just some silly personal stuff. I hope you enjoyed that. Let me know. I'd love to do some mailbag segments with you. Shoot me some emails if you have questions about life, your future, this show, anything. And maybe I'll read it and we'll talk about it together. Okay, darlings, that's it. That means it's a wrap. I hope you had a brilliant, beautiful time with me today. And, you know, I really hope that this podcast is something that you can just kind of turn on in the background and let some beautiful ideas and feelings drop into you. I often watch my husband as he's cooking in the evening, and he's really a fan of those podcasts where they recap television shows. And it's such a soothing experience watching him. He's cooking and spinning around. The pots are steaming, and we're hearing people, you know, pick apart scenes bit by bit. And I could just feel all of the day draining off of him as he lets his mind sort of halfway wander into what they're saying. And then another part of his mind is making sure that the spaghetti is properly, you know, strained. I want this show to be like that for you as well when you can just turn on and listen to and feel a little better at the end of your day as a result of hearing. So that's my goal. And with that one last reminder, today is the day that stuff nobody taught you comes out and anyone who has purchased it bite today. It's the 25th of April by the way. I have two free workshops and a free Flow Dream and a raffle drawing. It's all happening, especially if you're listening to this today and I can just get you in right under the wire. You will be entered for all of this yummy stuff, including my party that I'm having later on tonight. I will be doing either a Facebook or Instagram live where I'll be pulling the raffle doing all kinds of stuff. So take a second, check out what's happening in Flow Dreaming Land. That said, lots of love to you all. See you next week. Sometimes we need a good old cathartic do over. We've been flatlining, emotionally spent and wrung out like an old washcloth. We want to feel a different way, be a different way. We've plateaued. We're stuck. We need to gain purpose and direction and feel good again. We want to find the self worth, confidence and inner strength that got wiped away from years of frustration, disappointments and emotional depletion. We're ready to uplevel and go bigger and when we do, we want to know that we'll be wildly successful at it. This is what's kept me busy these last couple of years. I wrote a book all about how to reinvent yourself up level and find your path again. I wrote three books actually, but only one is on its way to you. It's called Stuff Nobody taught you and I took all the lessons from me school and wrote them out. Not only that, but I go through MI school in the book with you, right alongside you. We both reignite and maybe even reinvent ourselves by the end. There are 40 actionable lessons. I want you to read just one small chapter a night and then do or think about whatever I ask you to do at the end. It's a formula and it works like crazy. If you pre order the book today, I've got some fabulous bonuses for you. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, wherever you get your books. If you're listening to this and the book is already out though, don't worry, I've got some goodies for you too, including downloadable worksheets that will make reading it so much easier. So here it is. Stuff nobody taught you. I sure hope you love it.