The unsexy nature of stillness

I'll guide you into my internal cosmos over and over because now I finally know why it matters. welcome again :)

me and my silly morning coffee have very important things to say

I’ve been wanting to write more from an outside perspective. As a writer who often looks outward instead of inward, as if that was even possible. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times on my socials. It’s a tension that I have struggled with in the past. Stop writing so much from an inner perspective.

Ha.

Something I’ve only recently realized about myself—and it still feels like news—is that I’m deeply ambitious.

I used to think I was the opposite. But no. I’m a fierce wolf.

I just couldn’t admit it.

For a long time, I kept that part of me buried in my psyche, maybe because ambition always sounded like noise, like a hunger I didn’t know how to name. But being a writer is ambitious. Fiercely so. To decide that your greatest source of fulfillment requires you to sit with the world, find words to shape it, and say: This matters. Listen.

That’s not small.

I guess I’ve been trying to translate experience as it stills. To shape a story from something as simple as: I went out today, set foot on the ground, walked to the gym, grabbed groceries, and came back to enjoy the presence of my own being.

Because that’s what life has been lately. And I have found so much meaning in it.

So, the outside perspective..

The grand storyline. The big, important arc I thought I needed to write something that mattered is as simple as routine. But routine takes time. Routine is the act of getting to know yourself deeply and fully. The act of listening.

So what if the real work is happening in the smallest acts?

What if the boldest thing I can do is walk through my day like it matters and write from there?

What if my writing is not threatened because I pursue a simple and meaningful way of living?

What if my full potential is actually unlocked when I sit still and allow creation to pierce me?

🜁

I’ve been enjoying the simplicity of life in ways that almost feel threatening, and I know why.

Peace, quiet, and stillness can feel almost unnatural when the world around you is spinning and complaining. Loud, fast, a chaotic comet hurtling through everything. To enjoy simplicity can feel like nothing is happening at all. And naturally, your body feels out of sync with the noise outside. Like you’re moving in slow motion while everything else is rushing past.

But isn’t that a lie? Ugh.

I think that when we finally allow ourselves the space to unplug from the “supposed to be”s of the world, we start experiencing a kind of transformation that only the body can feel…a soft and slow kind.

Sometimes (more often than not), we ignore the cues of the body as if it weren’t the only thing that’s real.

Our bodies are the wisest maps we have. They hold a kind of wisdom that the mind can’t always access—memory is stored differently within it, deeper, faster, and more instinctively. That’s why we have intuition. That’s why we feel the truth in the gut before we can explain it with words.

An insight I noted from the book The Mountain Is You — a very practical guide to understanding self-sabotage.

But the body doesn’t shout as we know it, even tho deep inside it feels like it, (only if you are paying the right amount of attention).

The transformation happening in the body doesn’t always need to be named to be real. Sometimes it’s enough if you are feeling simply safe.

If you connect with the meat suit you were given, you’ll notice that transformation happens quietly in the bones, and it’s the realest thing you can experience.

But that kind of stillness mmmmm is not sexy. Not loud. That kind of attentiveness is not taught in schools.

Chaos is.
Change is.
War is.
Conflict is.
Struggle is.
Fear is.
Alertness is.

They are sexy because they promise drama. Distraction. Action. Fire.

But what if the real kind, the one that lasts, happens in the bones? In the silence between two breaths? In the moment you choose to stay instead of escape?

In the exhale we’re all chasing, not realizing it’s always available to us.

*Go on, pause for a bit, breathe in long and steady. Do the same as you exhale, then continue and ask yourself: Am I still reading from the same place?*

Mhm, that kind of power.

⋖⋗

In the past, it’s been hard for me to write from this place without feeling like a repetitive and uninteresting character. I was judging my process and my voice as a writer because I felt I needed a sexy spark. A constant plot twist. The fire. The drama. The action.

Even though there’s been a bunch of those the last couple of months, *hehe make it stop* I love that I’m currently being pulled to write from a place of stillness, where I can find so much movement and existence.

Maybe today I decided to write these words because something within wanted to speak from that version of me that is becoming without rushing. Becoming through compassion. Becoming, finally, with honesty.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t like the word authenticity, silly me. For a long time, I pushed it away. Rejected it, and also everyone who kept using it, as if the word itself granted them the graceful experience to actually be authentic. I can also be the annoyed kid in the room.

But I realized my rejection came from the fact that I wasn’t being authentic with myself, and of course, the wor(l)d stopped resonating.

⁂

It’s easy to come up with sexier reasons:

I want to be different.
I want to say something new.
I don’t want to do the same thing everyone else is doing.
I want to take the unfamiliar path. I want to walk the long road.
I want to live like Henry David Thoreau in Walden, but in Barcelona.

But this irreverence isn’t necessarily negative. It’s an internal guide.

source: cosmos

Call it the Aquarius in me. Or the inherited patterns of an isolated parent. Or both.

Whatever it is, I’ve found so much quiet beauty in my small daily rituals. In listening to my inner worlds and choosing what feels right—even if it makes no noise. Even if it doesn’t look like progress to anyone else.

After years of conflicting with myself, my thoughts and behaviors, I’m finally beginning to feel something that only happens in the privacy of the soul.

And it reveals itself in the smallest moments.

Like walking the same route each day.
Like saying hi to the same humans at the corner store.
Swimming in the sea all by myself.
Rejecting the joint.
Smiling at the stranger who somehow always crosses your path.
Relaxing the jaw when someone unexpectedly speaks to you.
Helping. Receiving. Laughing softly.
Dancing to the songs in my headphones while waiting for the traffic light to turn green. And not caring about who’s watching, but who’s getting infected with the energy and smirking to it.

So it’s not isolation, because when the world knocks, you are open and smile.

꩜

Lately, I’ve been practicing EFT (emotional freedom technique) to root into one mantra:

Trust the process.

I’ve whispered it into a thousand different moments over the past three months.
And the other night, something opened.

I realized:

Trusting the process doesn’t mean waiting for a future version of myself to arrive. It means learning how to build confidence here. How to create safety in my body, in my nervous system, in my words.

How to turn this human body, this strange, glorious, sensitive meat costume, into a home.

❍

Right now, I’m holding many visions at once. The future feels exciting again. But this time, I’m not trying to control its shape. The unknown finally feels safe.

I used to be afraid of the outcomes.
I used to be afraid of the things my heart and body were asking.
I kept on rejecting them, keeping myself at bay. Not allowing the transition to happen.
I used to be specific, obsessed with detail, to feel a sense of control.
And *personal note*: I still daydream.

I still build parallel realities in my head.

But now I know the real magic doesn’t only live in the vision. It lives in the present moment. I’m no longer chasing outcomes. I’m chasing a feeling.

Which one, Eli??

Wholeness.

And wholeness was never a destination but a stream of choices.

A walk in the sun.
A midday workout.
A meal that leaves you feeling alive.
A night with your phone on airplane mode and your hand on your belly, whispering love into discomfort.
Speaking the truth even when it shakes things.
Listening instead of reacting.
Wearing your joy without shame.
Wearing your shadows like maps.
Cutting the cycle of constant rejection in the world.

Trusting the process is just this:

Creating tiny moments of truth, over and over, until they build a life.

𓃠

Naturally, it’s prompt time:

What does trusting the process means to you? ⇥

How does stillness feel in the body? ⧖

Create momentum with this playlist I crafted for focus time: tRust thE proceSs

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