SSP 080: Weekly Lesson - The Cycles Of Living

Hey, what's going on, guys? It's Jordan Kanlis here, speaker, coach and founder of State Shifters. And you're listening to the State Shifters Podcast, the show designed to help conscious achievers master their internal state and break free from the limiting patterns that are keeping them stuck. So you can live a life of passion, purpose and freedom. And on this podcast, you're going to receive everything you need to evolve physically, emotionally, spiritually. And you're going to be getting the tools, the strategies, the live coaching interviews, all, all from conscious creators who are also living their purpose and leaving their mark on the world. And really, it's my belief that we're all capable of greatness. And once we have the courage to own our pain and learn the lessons from our past, we can create a future built around our purpose. And my intention with this show is to really give you the resources you need to help to tap into your unique soul mission and really live life from a beautiful state of being. So. So with that being said, if you want more resources, tool support on your journey, then feel free to go to state-shifters.com I have a few few free workbooks and webinars and videos you can check out. If you want to join my free Facebook community, you can click the link in the show description. And if you're interested in getting help from me or some mentoring, if you want to accelerate your evolution and move beyond these limiting patterns that are holding you back from living your soul's purpose, then send me an email jordanate-shifters.com or go to state-shifters.com work with me and we can tee up a call. Other than that, enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the State Shifters Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you discover your true potential through connecting the mind, body and soul. What's cooking guys? I wanted to jump on here quickly and do a live video to share some insights that I've had over the last couple of weeks and I've titled this live today the Cycles of Living. Now if you're tuning into this, you either after I've recorded it. My intention behind this video is to really give you guys some perspective as to what happens when we go through different cycles of our life. Now for me personally, over the last couple of weeks I've really felt a down cycle come in and you'll know in your own life if you have a level of self awareness to notice that you go through periods of expansion and contraction and our mind likes to cling to labels to the period of expansion being this is good. This is fun, this is what we want. And the contraction periods being, oh, this is bad, this is negative, I'm going backwards. And I noticed my mind do this over the last couple of weeks in my life. Over the last few months, I felt a lot of expansion. And then over the last few weeks it's been the opposite. I felt a bit of contraction, I felt a bit of stagnation. Now if you're not careful, the mind will quickly jump in and want to label that as like, are you going backwards? You're not growing as fast as you used to be. And the lesson I've taken from that and as I've observed that happen over the last few years, as you become more conscious and notice these cycles and patterns in your life, you'll know that it's actually in the down times, in the times where you think you're going backwards or you think you're coming up against challenge, adversity, struggle, they're actually the periods of time that build the foundation for the next level of the expansion. So for me, now it's about learning to not judge this little backwards period. Not judge the periods in your life when you feel like you're stuck and nothing's happening and you're losing hope or you're losing motivation. And you'll know this because you'll know you're going through a down cycle. When you catch yourself going back into old patterns, old ways of being, old habits that you're trying to get rid of, you'll find yourself losing the motivation and you will kind of just like default back into being lazy or, or not doing the things you know you should be. So those down cycles are definitely indicated by your habits, by your behaviors. So if you're catching that, if you're noticing that you're in a down cycle, it's about just pulling back for a second and maybe stopping trying to force things. This is what I catch myself sometimes doing is like I'll struggle. My body wants to just chill out and kind of like be with this, this lower period of energy, but I'll sometimes try and push through that and it creates this resistance and self judgment which where I'll then default back into old habits of distraction and avoidance. So if you can catch yourself and realize if you're in a down cycle and you're not going through a period of rapid growth and this is a time to maybe pull back a little bit, do a little bit less work and take the lessons, you can really start to move through these cycles and transitions a lot more smoothly. So for me, that's been about trusting and listening to the body. Because you'll know when your body wants to rest. You'll know when your body wants to just chill out, stay at home, do less work, sleep more. That's a big one. Catching myself, like, the body wants to sleep more, allowed to sleep more. There's a reason for that. There's a energetic transition that's happening. Sometimes it's collective. And I've actually noticed that as well. Last week I was feeling like, damn, I'm just like, I don't have as much energy this week. What's going on? And I was trying to force things, and it's just nothing. Nothing was happening. So, look, I'm just gonna sit down, step back, and just do way less and trust that there's some energy shifting right now. And then I have conversations with other people and they're saying the same thing. Hey, I didn't have much energy last week either. So sometimes there's, like, collective things that are happening here that really, when we learn to just trust and honor what our body's telling us to step back and just be like, hey, today I don't want to do very much. And yes, maybe you do have to go to a job. Not everyone has the luxury of, you know, working from home and running their business. But if you do have to go to a job, can you have that level of wellness to know, okay, this ain't going to be one of my most productive days today. I'm maybe just going to take it easy and type some loose ends or do something that's going to be more in alignment with what you feel. So knowing that, right? Knowing that, okay, if I'm in a down cycle right now, there is something life is preparing me to go through. Life is preparing me to go through a big shift. So really learning to step back and trust. Okay, I'm about to go through a period of expansion, and to prepare for that period of expansion, what do you need to give yourself? And as an example for me, I've noticed this big down cycle. I've noticed this slowdown, this feeling of, like, stagnant. This feeling of, like, I'm not growing, I'm not growing at this rate that I want to grow. And that's all the mind, right? And what I wanted to give myself was some time away in solitude. So next week I. I've realized that having critical moments in time spread out in your year where you go off in solitude, or you can break away from your regular routine and just spend Some time being, doing way less and just being with yourself in nature or with, you know, with people who kind of allow you to connect back with yourself. And within those times, you allow the transition or you allow the next level to come through. You allow like life or nature or spirit to move through you, to direct you. Okay, here, here's the clarity. But we don't get the clarity if we don't make that space in our schedule, that space in our routines. So to support these transitions, the chapters, the levels, you must create space in the times when you feel like you just want to give up and be like, fuck, I'm done, I'm done. I'm not getting anywhere. I'm not growing at the rate I want. That's an indicator that it's time to actually pull back, stop trying to grow and pull back. And just like, I'm just going to give space to myself, give space so life can move through me and show me what's next. Now a lot of the times that's, that's usually the question that I'll ask, what's next? Life? Where do you want me to go? Where, where do you want me to direct my energy and to get answers to those questions? And I invite you guys as well. Listening, asking questions from life is really, really how you start to develop a relationship with nature, spirit and the consciousness that's governing all of life. When you start to ask questions to that part of you, you'll get the guidance you're looking for and it will show up in very subtle ways. But the more you can create space in your life, you know, and if you can embed that space in your regular routine, fantastic. I do that through meditation, breathwork, walking. Doing less and being more gives you space to receive the clarity as to what the next action is going to be on your, on your step in your journey now, within the transitions, because these are bigger moments in your evolution where there's big chapters, big shifts that need to happen, redirecting of your focus. You must make more space. So more space for me is like a week where I'll unplug from technology and social media as best as I can. Because it's all these little things that are pulling out energy and attention away that suck the space out. Now that's, that's a really important realization because we don't, we don't actually notice sometimes how much energy is being sucked out through all these little like attention grabbing, mental stimulus things that pull our energy away and we lose the internal space. So as you have These, these pull away moments. Maybe you want to give yourself a day. Just like I'm going to detox from all technology and distractions right now and see what happens when you create that space. How much guidance and insight comes through when you just sit out in nature for a day or you go for a hike and don't bring your phone. See what comes through in those moments. So the reason why I want to, I want to emphasize that is because in these down periods, if you're going through a period in your life where you fuck, I don't know what to do next. I feel like I've hit a point in the journey where I'm like, I don't know where to go now then usually. Well, that is a great indicator that it's time to create some space in your life and stop trying to figure it all out. And that's such a big lesson for me as well as I've been on my journey, you know, my mind loves to try to figure things out. I'm gonna figure out the path. I gotta, I gotta, you know, calculate it all out. I gotta plan things out. And sometimes there's just, you just gotta surrender and let go. Let go of trying to figure it out, you know, Let go of trying to, you know, calculate why you're not feeling your best and just trusting that, hey, right now I just want to, I just want to chill. I just want to be. I just want to go out and just spend some time alone. I don't want to do any work, I don't want to do any coaching. And really honoring that is what gives you the next wave. The next wave of insight and clarity and motivation and inspiration. And that's what it's all about. Just riding these cycles of life and just acknowledging that we're not going to be high vibe, high energy, inspiring, go, go, go all the time. We're not going to have that level of inspiration flowing through us all the time. If you just look at nature, you know, if we're, we are connected with nature and you look at nature, you've got all the seasons. Winter, autumn, spring, summer. We the exact same. We're going through seasons individually and collectively. Even if you zoom out and look at the way humans have evolved on planet Earth, you can see the seasons of, of change that have happened. Like these pandemics. They happen in seasons like zoom back 40, 50 years ago, there was a pandemic that happened. Similar sort of transition, similar sort of change. Now we forget this because we're too like narrowed in and like, okay, well, how do I fix this problem? How do I get over this? If you just zoom out and trust that we're going through a season of transition and transformation, it allows you to surrender to that and trust that and trust that we're exactly where we need to be. You're experiencing exactly what you need to be experiencing right now. Based on the season you're in now, the more you have these conversations with people, you'll start to feel into, okay, look, there's a lot of us going through the same season. We're all going through a period of growth, a period of maybe contraction before a big expansion. Now, contraction contract. Contraction periods are periods of pain, struggle, like feeling like you want to give up. Now on the other side of that is the big expansion. Now, we're all going through that right now, whether in different levels of intensity, but really just giving yourself the permission to just trust that if you're going through a difficult time, then you know, there's something coming out of the other end of that. And that's really the belief system that I've chosen to adopt with life is that life is happening for me. If there's something that happens to me that my mind doesn't like, the mind goes, oh, that's. Why is this happening? This is unfair. This is. I don't like this. It's stepping back and knowing, okay, this, this is how life is giving me this opportunity to learn something from this pain or this, this challenge or this circumstance that I don't know what I want to be in now. Oftentimes that you just got to develop some practice and some reminders to develop the trust and the surrender. The mind doesn't. My mind doesn't want to surrender. I'm sure a lot of other people's doesn't. So it's about having that commune and relationship with yourself to say, hey, hey, it's all good. Take a breath, slow down, stop doing. Just be. Surrender to what you feel and learning to just, like, just hands off, Just take your hands off the wheel for a second and just sit in the passenger seat of life and just allow life to drive. We're too busy sometimes trying to take the wheel and pull it a different way. Be like, I don't want to go this way, but if life's pulling you in a certain direction, you can. You just like, hands off the wheel and just trust that this is where life wants to take me. And I'm getting better at this. I'm getting better at this. I'm by no means A master. And I really feel like that is the purpose of our evolution and that is the purpose of doing inner growth is learning to really understand this intuitive guidance that's always coming through. And life is always directing you as to which direction it wants you to go to based on your highest expression, your highest calling, your highest purpose, your highest per. It's all embedded within you already. And life is actually trying to pull it out of you. But we're too busy, got our hands on the wheel, trying to drive life a certain way. Oh, I want to be in a corporate account. Let's go this way. But your soul's like, no, I just want to be a speaker and speak on stages. So a lot of that is learning to just take your hands off the wheel. Deconditioning the mind as to thinking them, thinking. Thinking that you have control of things when we really don't. We don't actually have control of. We have control of very little, not very much at all. You know, you have the control to decide how you want to respond to the things that life gives you. That decision will always come back to, are you playing the game of this is happening for me or to me is, are you in resistance to life or you in flow? Are you a victim or are you a creator? These decisions dictate how fast you evolve, the speed of your evolution, the speed of you reaching your max capacity. As to this is my purpose, this is my calling. And I'm living in alignment that with that daily. And back to the theme of this, live is the highest calling for you. In a specific moment, your highest purpose might be to literally stop and do nothing. And I'm realizing that not every single day I have to get on here and do a live and be like, yes, I'm going to be my best and express my greatness to the world. Because some days I don't feel like doing that. Some days life is like, hey, go out and chill. Go out and sit in nature and just be with your body because it's tired. And learning to just take the hands off the wheel, step back, mine, the mind wants to go and just like, no, no, no, we have a plan. We got to go this way. Life has a different plan. Sometimes trusting life's plan, can we make that intention every single day? Wake up, wake up. What does life have planned for me today? And when you wake up and you feel good and you feel inspired and you want to take action, it's about honoring that. It's about leaning into discomfort, is about actually putting yourself in the environments that are going to pull the best out of you. This is the reason why I jump into these lives because they pulled, they pull the best out of me. You know, I don't like planning too many things because when you're on live, it's just like, it's just go. What's coming through right now is what life wants to express through. And whoever's receiving it, this is exactly what you need to receive in this moment because you're in this setting, in this container with me. So it's perfect. So really knowing that when you're on run, take the action, get uncomfortable, go to the gym, stand up and have that difficult conversation, you know, know that when you're in alignment, that's your time, that's your time to go. And don't, don't delay those times. Don't delay those times. Because like, yes, my, my lessons are all about slowing down, on honoring that ability to slow down. But if you've been slowing down a lot, if you've been doing a whole lot of nothing, then maybe it's the opposite. It's time to find the alignment and go take the action. So knowing where you're at on the spectrum. But today's live, the spectrum for me was the down cycle. Honoring the down cycle and knowing when to just trust and do nothing for a little bit. Because when you do that, that's when the big next chapter or level up happens and the energy moves again. And just knowing that everything's temporary, everything. If you feel like you're in a shit mood, the mind thinks that's going to last forever, but it doesn't. It's passing, it's. It's fleeting, transitory. Everything is. That's why the same as these seasons, like winter doesn't hang around forever. But sometimes if you live in a place like Toronto and you're fucking in March and it's still snowing, you feel like it's going to last forever. It's the same as our negative moods and our shitty feelings. We feel like they're going to hang around forever, but they don't. If you just like step back and be like, this is passing. I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling anxious right now. That's okay. I know it's going to be here for a little while, but it's going to be gone. Instead of fighting it, resisting it, and you just really miss the opportunity to learn what it's trying to teach you. The lesson in that is the transitory nature of life. These cycles go up they go down, stock market goes up, it goes down. We go through pandemics, we go through periods of expansion. It happens. Everything's fleeting. You know, we're on, we're on this earth for a very fleeting period of time. We're all going to die at some point in time. Like, can you acknowledge the impermanence of life, the impermanence of everything that you're experiencing and learn to take your hands off the wheel and just trust, surrender, let go, be, flow, live and try to have fun. Try to have fun. That's all for me. I going to wrap it up there. Whoever joined me, thank you. You're amazing. I acknowledge you on this journey and this growth that you're going through. And it's, it's a real honor to be able to share this with people who are, who are tuning into this kind of content because we're all in this together. So as always, if there's anything that resonated and you want to continue this conversation, you know where to hit me up for this week. Anyway, next week I'm going off unplug, so you won't be able to reach me. But for now, hit me up this week if you want to, if you want to chat. Otherwise, peace. See you later. Hey, there we have it, guys. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. And yeah, look, if you made it this far, cool. Here's my voice again in your ear and I'm gonna make one more request for you is go ahead and subscribe. Leave a comment on the podcast page because I'm really putting a lot of focus and attention on getting this podcast out to more people because I know what I'm putting in here can serve and bring value to people and it would mean a lot if you got value from this to to leave some feedback and subscribe so you stay up to date with what's coming up and as always, follow me on Instagram and love hearing from you. It's at State Shifters until the next episode. Guys, thank you so much and I appreciate you.