It’s Official… I’m 30

As the dawn of my thirtieth birthday arises I cannot help but sit back and reflect on all of the amazing things that have been happening in my life up until this point. Not only have I completely uprooted and restructured my life, shaping it into a meaningful existence that I am happy and proud to experience, but I have also evolved in many other ways that I could not even have begun to imagine. Though I am grateful for the abundance of growth and change that has taken place without much effort on my part, I intentionally flirt with the idea of what would happen if I channeled that change and focused my energy on cultivating all of the ways I want to change my life. 

Up until now I have in many ways been on autopilot. Moving through the world hoping from one opportunity to the next, never really knowing where I was going to land I didn’t really have a plan, or rather I quickly learned how to release the need for one. Before I moved away from the states over a year ago now, I was still very much living in my analytical, logical part of my brain. That’s not to say or imply that this area of my brain is no more, however, it more so speaks to how now, I am finding myself leaning into my more free spirited nature, allowing life to come to me as it comes. While this has been a freeing and life changing view to adopt for me, it has also been challenging in the fact that I have lost the sense of discipline and dedication that my logical brain held in such high regard. 

Starting to worry that I will have to leave behind the fluidity and freedom of my creative right brain, I soon realize that there is a way for me to have both. Instead of focusing on one over the other, I could try this radical thing called find balance. Woah, what a concept huh? It seems so simple when we say it but to truly understand and grasp the nature of what this means can often be challenging. For example, as I sat to schedule my daily set of routines, it very quickly starts to feel like I am doing chores and/or checking off a list of “have to’s” instead of happily enjoying a variety of “want to’s”. When I start to feel this way I then revert back to ways of just letting the day unfold and play out as it does. This leads to a decrease in productivity and focus throughout my day that could have been fostered if I had stuck to my plan. 

The point of this example is to demonstrate how easily I become unbalanced. Instead of making daily routines and forcing myself to see them as things I have to do everyday or else I am a horribly uncommitted human being, I can create a safe space for my feelings of tension and lack of desire. This way I can listen to my wants and needs instead of putting them aside. By cultivating balance I will be able to stick to a routine with more effort and ease because I would have allowed myself the grace of remaining open to the idea that things may not go as I plan everyday, but that won’t make me any less worthy of enjoying my existence. In stripping my mind of this unnecessary added pressure I stand in alignment with the creatively free spirit inside of me while also honoring and utilizing my analytical over thinking planner. 

All in all, for myself I am realizing that life is exactly what we make it. Though we are not always in control of what happens to us, we are most certainly in control of how we react to such things and it is in this spirit that I am choosing to live my thirties and beyond. As I begin to embark on this new journey, I remain open to all of the many vast possibilities that life has to offer. Accepting that some things come to us more slowly in a way that only the mature wisdom of time can provide. So here is to my thirtieth birthday, and to me finding my way back to all of the beauty and confidence that has always lived inside of me. Here is to letting that light out, shining brightly for all the world to see. May thirty teach me humility in my power, confidence in my strength, and balance in my alignment with a higher, more enlightened version of myself. Happy Birthday kid, never stop painting the town whatever fluorescent color placed on your heart at that moment!

“I am just happy to be alive, so its time I go out and live!”

-Rodnisha Ford