“Breathe,” the dentist said encouragingly as we waited for my tooth to numb, “and go to your happy place.”
My happy place was anyplace but this chair. The dentist was replacing a filling on a tooth that a previous dentist wasn’t able to numb before he drilled three decades ago. The previous dentist declared, “You must have a windy nerve on this tooth!” Now I felt like full body nerve ending, gripping the sides of the chair, waiting to see if this time I’d only hear the sound of the drill against my upper tooth or I’d feel every scratchy movement of the drill like before.
My happy place? My mind starting searching for the place to go. A beach in Thailand? I’ve been to Thailand but never a beach there. They look nice in movies though. I scanned my mind for more beaches… Florida beaches I grew up on, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean, the Hamptons, or even one mile away from home in Santa Monica? All the beaches I do know and love didn’t feel quite right. “I can’t even find my happy place,” I thought to myself, clawing permanent indentations in the soft pink arms of the fully reclined chair. “I’m 50-years old! Shouldn’t I have a happy place by now?! My kids handle dental work with more ease!” I thought.
Then popped the image of my two teenage children in my mind’s eye. There they were, beaming at the absurdity of how nervous I was about this routine dental procedure and reassuring me that all was well. Next the face of my beloved appeared, also smiling brightly and encouragingly with his usual, “YOU’RE DOING GREAT!”
That was it! My happy place wasn’t a PLACE. My happy place was these three faces looking back at me.
I breathed. The dentist found the nerve and my tooth (and entire right side of my face) was fully numb. Plus, I’d found my happy place.
Instead of searching for some happy place, I’d found what worked for me and stayed right there. This has been the gift of trusting myself and my intuition. It’s been a journey, and I’m still walking this windy road. I’m learning and relearning what feels right in my body and what feels off. I now know what feels like a yes and what a no or neutral feels like, too. I don’t have to flip a coin to figure out my next step. I go inward and trust that the next step is inside of me, although it often doesn’t make sense in the moment. In today’s world where it seems everyone’s favorite interview question is, “What’s your morning routine?” it’s very tempting to use other people’s blueprints for success. I learn over and over that my way and my blueprint is inside of me.
I’m here to remind you that truth lives inside of you. Your truth is one breath away. Your blueprint for success, fulfillment, and where/who/what is your happy place is uniquely yours.
What’s come up for me a lot over the past few weeks is how life offers us scripts, just like actors get when they audition for a role. Scripts are what’s handed to us — for better or for worse. Scripts are the rules, the cultural programming, the identities we are given and take on, and even the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. My script tells me that there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things, and that I’m limited by time and space and my past. It tells me what I “should” search and find that happy place in my mind.
When my beloved, a talented improviser and actor, rehearses for an audition, one of the things I admire is how he’ll veer off-script slightly. He gives the character and the lines new dimensions and layers with small adjustments. Going off script in life means turning some of the things we think about ourselves and the world upside down. For me going off script means there isn’t always a right and wrong way, instead there’s what feels most true and alive. Off-script means done is perfect, even if it’s not perfectly done and doing my best is good enough in a world full of striving and competition. Going off-script means when the dentist tells me to go to my happy place, I go to a feeling of love and connection and see three beautiful faces… instead of a white sandy beach.
If you’d like to strengthen your connection to your inner knowing, I’ve got some fun offerings coming up! Ambition to Action, my signature group coaching program starts May 17 and The Intuition Club reignites on May 16 and happens twice a month for the rest of 2024.
In case you could also use a reminder: There’s no need to look outside of yourself for answers. In a world chock full of knowledge and information, inside you lies oodles of experience and wisdom. The script can be helpful, but tossing it in the bin and doing it your way can be magical. Your happy place? Only you know where/who/what that is. 💜
