Slowing Down and Listening to Inner Guidance #181

Would you join me in hearing the message to slow down and listen to inner guidance because this helped me a lot today and might help you also?

Thank you for reading about day 181 of Happier People Podcast and I hope you enjoy it!

Slowing Down and Listening to Inner Guidance

"Slow down and follow inner guidance."

I'm grateful I received this message today after doing that because I've needed it. I've been running around. I've been in a hurry to build even more followers. I've been in a hurry to make more money. I've been in a hurry to promote Steem and to help Steem continue to grow.

I've been in such a hurry that I've gotten what seems to be like a sick or a flu over the last couple weeks. I've been frustrated with it at a few points and the message to me seems to be to slow down and follow inner guidance.

In order to isolate inner guidance, sometimes it's helpful to look at what the opposite is.

Inner guidance is following rigid structures and routines, and also being able to let those go and do whatever is right in the spur of the moment.

Not following inner guidance is sticking to routines, sticking to rules, sticking to exactly what we think we're supposed to do all the time, even if it doesn't feel right.

Here's my experience with this today.

Would you let me share this story because maybe it will be helpful for you the next time it comes up in your life?

This morning I had a car appointment scheduled, which helped to get me out of my normal routine. My normal routine is to wake up, spend some time with my wife and daughter, and then as soon as they leave the house I immediately get rolling on my filming.

I got to film videos, I got to write a Steem post, and now, recently, I got to do something with my music, and I do that usually seven days a week even if the inner guidance suggests there might be something better to do like, "Maybe you should hang out with your family this morning?"

"No, no, no. I got to keep hustling. I got to keep working on getting more followers. I need to keep building my business. My business is important. It helps people."

Today I went to the car dealership and I worked on setting this new iPhone 8 plus up, which I'm trying this video on here.

After I got that done I went and got my wife a birthday present, an Apple watch, which is what she's asked for, for her birthday. Then after that, I was planning to go home and do my video right away, and then do some music. Basically, I was planning to do my usual routine.

My inner guidance kept suggesting this one AA group to go to that I don't usually go to. I go to it maybe every week or a few weeks, and not normally during the week anymore because I've got a different group and that's my weekday group.

This meeting kept coming up in my head.

"Why don't you go to this meeting?"

At first, just the name of the group came up and since it's Alcoholics Anonymous I avoid mentioning any of the groups or people that go to it in particular outside of myself because this is my life, these are the facts of my life and that's the truth. That's honesty to tell you about my life without trying to hide things or be secret about them.

I kept thinking of this group to go to, and then I asked myself, "I don't understand. I don't understand, why would I go to that today? Why would I go to that when I'm going to go this afternoon?"

"My plan was to go to a meeting this afternoon, so why do I need to go to this group right now?"

I kept asking questions, "What is the best thing for me to do? What would be most helpful for everyone else for me to do?"

As I asked those questions the AA group kept coming up again and again, immediately as that first response. I was confused then because I wanted to go home and film a video. I wanted to go home and play some of my music. I wanted to follow my normal routines but my inner guidance suggested a different path.

Ordinarily, you would think of that as a tough decision, but for me today I trust my inner guidance. I feel like it's similar to that Felix Felicis potion, if you've watched "Harry Potter 6" where Harry Potter takes it and he's got this huge task he's working on. He's trying to solve it, he doesn't know how to do it, but he just takes the luck potion and he goes to his friend's cabin, Hagrid. He has no idea why he should go that night. He doesn't know what he's doing. He just feels like that's the place to be. He goes there and all of a sudden he gets what he's been trying to get for a whole lot of the book and he just went there because it felt right.

I went to that AA meeting today because it felt right, and then right after that, same thing. I was going to come home and just film a video right away, but it felt right to just go hang out with my family for a little bit.

Now, my wife and daughter are taking a nap together, so it feels right to do this now even though it's not exactly how I planned it. I didn't plan on filming a video on this phone, but I thought I'd film it and see how it does, see how the audio is, see what you think of it and share this reminder today because what happens is when life goes bad often the inner guidance we get will help us get back on track.

But then, when life goes good, we don't need that inner guidance anymore. When everything seems to be going my way, I'm getting new followers and making plans, I think, "I don't need to listen to that inner voice today. I've got this. I've got this. Everything's going so well clearly. I am in command."

I realize today that I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing making this video, I don't know what good it will do. I don't know what life is going to throw at me and I don't know hardly anything.

"You know nothing, Jon Snow."

And yet life is so peaceful and happy that way.

I don't need to know everything. I'm okay today saying, "I don't know."

When someone asks me a question and I don't know, I answer, "I don't know."

Instead of trying to guess, "Well, it's definitely this way and that's …"

"I don't know."

And sometimes it might make me look bad.

My brother asks, "What did you do yesterday?"

Me: "I don't know."

Brother: "Well, come on. Don't you remember?"

Me: "Well, I could tell you some of the things I did yesterday, but how detailed do you want it?"

Sometimes it can be a cop-out to just say, "I don't know," as if we're not even going to look like, "What did you do yesterday, Jerry?" and if I just say, "I don't know," you could think, "Well, that's kind of a cop-out."

At the same time, I've been doing a lot of these cryptocurrency videos, but the truth is I didn't know. A lot of the videos I made, I had no business making a video talking about, "The price is going to be…" because I had no idea what the price was going to be anything.

I'm letting go of doing some of the things like the cryptocurrency videos because I've put everything all in one spot. What business do I have talking about all the rest when I'm not paying attention to them?

Often inner guidance suggests letting go of things, saying, "Okay, we're done with that. We're going to let that go and move on," and sometimes it's hard to let go.

I just got this new iPhone 8 plus because my iPhone 5S has started doing weird things with the battery, the thumb pad's been broken for a while, "Blah! Blah! Blah!" Just finding reasons to spend a thousand dollars to get another phone. I've had it for three years, another reason.

At the same time even getting this iPhone 8 plus, which is so nice, I found it a little hard to let go of that iPhone 5. I've had it for three or three and a half years. I love it and I realize that if I want to have new things in life, I need to let go of the things I have.

I'm excited about music. I'm planning on pivoting my business to be tutorials, Steem posts and music, and that's what I will do. The tutorials will mostly be things related to whatever I'm learning like Steem, YouTube or music. That means I probably won't be doing any more cryptocurrency stuff, but I've had a hard time letting that go.

My inner guidance has suggested I stop doing the cryptocurrency stuff for a while and I've just kept doing it on autopilot. I'm grateful today to be here with you. I hope this is useful in your life today because hearing things like this has helped me a lot. My inner guidance is suggesting to make this a little shorter than I usually do, so I will wrap it up now.

I love you.

You're awesome.

I appreciate you joining me here on day 181 of Happier People Podcast, and I trust you will break me into your universe again when you'd like to hear more.

Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.

If you enjoyed this video would you please leave a like on it because that's how I'll know to do more videos just like this.

If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?

Love,

Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj

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