"Make it happening!" (Let's talk about taking action)
I am not a go-getter AND I am not broken.
I love me a good creativity challenge, so I suppose it’s a little surprising that I had not yet joined any writing challenge here, on Substack. Welp… I’ve just come across the Kaleidoscope Challenge, by
and , and I am drawn to take part.………… to Take Action lol
Which is great because that is the theme of February’s challenge.
My husband likes to watch the show Gold Rush, and one of the guys on the show, Tony Beets, has a few different things that he will say often that we will joke about. Like, “Sucks to be you!” (I like to say this one to my husband in jest when he’s teasing me about things he wished I would do that I don’t want to lol.)
Another one is “Make it happening!” — one of our current favorites.
And because of the topic of this post, I am hearing that phrase echoing in my head- in Tony Beets voice 🤭 “Make it happening!”
I could not help but use it as the title of my piece 🙃
Anyway… let’s get to it…
Taking action
I have an… uncomfortable relationship with taking action.
Our culture puts such priority on getting things done. Making things happen.
I mean… “Just do it”… right?!
We value goal setting and go getters.
MAKE IT HAPPENING YOU GUYS!!!
Life can be all that you want it to be if you set your mind to it and then take action.
Do the thing.
Don’t think so much. Make it happening!
Make it fucking happening!!!!!
Go! Go! Go! Don’t stop, just GO!!!
😵💫
I get exhausted just thinking about it
😩
Broken?!
Lazy. Procrastinator.
Words often thrown at me because I was not good at making myself move and take action.
I preferred to be still and wait.
I’d get done what I needed to get done. But god, motivating myself to move was hard. There had to be fast-approaching deadlines for movement to happen.
It felt like I was broken from the get-go. Factory defects, nothing to be done.
“Sucks to be you!”
No matter what I might try, it didn’t matter. Goal setting? Such a joke. And it didn’t matter what kind of goal strategy it might be. What’s the one that’s popular now? SMART goals or whatever? Is that a thing or am is my brain just making shit up now?! lol.
It doesn’t make a difference… my mind setting goals and intentions does NOT get me moving. It doesn’t move me to action. At. All.
But I am NOT broken!
Here’s the thing.
We are all designed differently. And I am NOT broken… I am just designed to take action differently than the way that our culture values and glorifies.
According to my Human Design1, I am designed to wait to respond. I am designed for a lot of stillness before action. I am designed to just go with the flow and allow life to come to me.
I am designed in a way that setting goals and trying to purposefully “get there” is completely counterproductive and will actually result in tons of frustration at best or, worse, things just going completely wrong.
Taking action, for me, only works when my body moves me because it feels drawn to action. Not when my mind has a Very Good Idea about How Things Should Be and then makes The Right Plan to get me there. That’s when things go horribly wrong and deep, deep frustration ensues.
I just want to take a quick aside to note that what I am saying about my design here is not just because Human Design (HD for short) “says so.” Everything I am saying about how I am designed comes more so from my personal experiences which HD just backs up with its knowledge and gives me a feeling of “permission” to be myself. It gives me a deep, inner sense that I am not actually broken. And wow, doesn’t that feel amazing!
Currently, I find myself in a period where my life feels like it doesn’t fit me.
I am feeling A TON of frustration - which means I need to take a step back and examine myself.
And definitely NOT take action right now.
The worst thing I can do for myself is take action from a place of frustration. According to HD- and my own experiences- frustration will only lead me astray.
The more I concentrate on the frustration, the more I am pulled into trying to manipulate everything around me as I rail against my current reality. In this energy, I lose myself in lack and envy, and any action I take sinks me further into this mucky energy like quicksand.
(If you are familiar with some of the more “advanced” HD stuff, this is me in my Desire transference!)
And then every decision I make takes me further away from satisfaction and deeper into frustration.
It’s about taking “aligned” action
The way out of the muck is to slow my roll. To calm down and breathe. To bring myself back to my body and to find my center.
👉 What do I need IN THIS MOMENT in order to find a feeling of satisfaction?
👉 What does my energy need and want RIGHT NOW?
👉 How can I honor my body in the physical space that I am currently occupying?
You see, for me, it’s all about being present in my body, in this moment.
If I start worrying about where I am going and trying to manipulate my present moment in order to get something different later, then I know I am getting lost in mental bullshit.
It’s hard enough not to get lost there on my own…
But if I start to listen to our culture’s “common wisdom” about what taking action means and how it should be done, I end up getting into that mental space where I rail against my reality and then lose myself in the frustrated manipulation of what is.
🌀
Ok.
Well, I’m starting to feel a little lost in what I am trying to say now… and I probably should stop writing and get back to “regular life” stuff lol (part of my frustration, but let’s not go there right now 😅) … so I guess that means it’s time to wrap this up!
What is “aligned” is individual and very personal to each of us
The most important point I want to emphasize here is that “aligned” action is not going to look the same for everyone. We are ALL designed differently and what is correct for me is not necessarily going to be correct for you or for “them”… for anyone other than me.
There are people for whom focusing on goal setting and where they desire to get to is absolutely correct. They are designed differently than me and the very thing that shows me I am on the wrong path is what they NEED to allow themselves to do. And then there are people for whom it is necessary to focus on different things altogether.
Anyway…
My cat is staring me down and I need to go feed her.
That’s all I got for you today.
Bye for now
💙
Some parting notes and shares:
If you are curious to see what my Human Design chart is, I shared it here. You can also read a bit about me in that post as well. Or head on over to my publication about page. Does anyone ever read those? I hope so cuz I do like mine!
I have been diving deep into Human Design, so a lot of what I write is about the experiences I have as I “experiment” with my design… but I do prefer not to get all technical and share things in plain language. So if you don’t anything about HD, it’s probably not going to get much in the way of the main points in my writings.
I don’t mention it directly above, but what I’m saying is that I’m a Generator and I have begun to deeply trust that my sacral authority can be my guide. In this post, I share how I started to learn the language of my sacral by following my energy.
If you have never heard of Human Design and are curious to know what it is about, this is a good place to get some basic info: https://www.jovianarchive.com/Human_Design/What_is_it
Hi Natalie, thanks for joining the challenge and taking action!
I don't know much about HD but my main thought from reading your post is, do you settle with what your chart says about you or are you spurred to take action in defiance of it?
Either way you took action in joining the challenge, you didn't sit and wait for it to come to you, you jumped in with both feet.