Aloha,

If you read last week’s newsletter, you may have remembered how to fly. And if you were brave enough to take that leap, you may have noticed that you didn’t die.

Yay!

And yet you, me, and every living thing will inevitably fall off of this mortal coil, at some point, and into a realm few have seen and lived to talk about.

That’s actually a lie. Many people have died and come back to life, it’s called a Near Death Experience (NDE). If you’re interested in hearing some of their experiences, I HIGHLY suggest going down an NDE story rabbit hole on YouTube. You may find it surprisingly sweetens the nectar of life.

Pardon the tangent. As I was saying, WE ALL GON’ DIE! And whether we are conscious of it or not, that fuzzy fact and our existential fear of it is an INCREDIBLY powerful source of motivation for how we choose to live our lives.

But what’s even more interesting than that is how the majority of us would rather die than speak in front of people. This is a widely circulated statistic at this point, and it begs the question: if the fear of dying motivates much of what we do in life, yet that fear is topped by our fear of speaking in front of others, than what happens if we allow our fear of public speaking to die as a greater motivation to live?

Ah-ha! How you like them apple pies!?!

But it’s a question I ask in all seriousness. If you could navigate the fear of vocally expressing yourself, truthfully, in front of people, how would you use your voice and words to create a life for yourself that felt so sweet it was as if you were flying?

And while we are at it, let’s throw another question into the ring: what if in order to fly, we actually needed to have our feet deeply rooted into something?

Am I making any sense or have a totally lost you here? Lots of questions today, I know, and they’re coming in hot and fast. No need to answer them, but do let them marinate because I’ve got one more for you:

What are the top five things you cannot live without?

This is a simple question but not a trivial one. It was posed to me by one of my mentors about four years ago, and gave me the answers to how I desire to fly, roots to sky, within a handful of minutes.

There’s no race to this though, so do not rush, but also do not dawdle. Allow your intuition to provide you with those five things, and then write them down somewhere.

Mine are listed below in no particular order:

• My family
• My puppy
• Physical movement
• Growth
• Nature

Done. That was simple enough. Not so fast. The tricky part is what follows.

You’ve just created a list of five things that you cannot live without. Now, one by one, go through that list and toss them into the metaphorical fire, until you are left with one.

The last one remaining for me was growth. As painful as it was to toss my family, my puppy, nature, and physical movement into the flames, I would be dying a slow miserable death inside, if I held onto them, at the expense of my truest expression, my need for growth, which would be topped by the fear of expressing that need in front of people. And this is in no way downplaying how vitally important those other four pieces are in my life. Rather, it gives them a greater appreciation and empowers me to bring more love, joy, and presence into my connection with them. Just sweetening the nectar drop by drop y'all.

So in this process be gentle with yourselves as you go down your list. Know that whichever remains will very likely provide you with the roots you need to fly.

And as Jessie Jackson used to say, ‘Keep Hope Alive!’

As always

Love + Play

Rua x BRT Studio