Actualized Living W/ Erik

All right, we are live here. Gonna give a few minutes to hopefully have some people hop on. Hope you're all doing well. Nice to see you enjoying, enjoyed what was warmer weather here in Minnesota for a few days, some 60 degree days, which is abnormal for this time of year. But we are back down into the thirties, so. All right, like I said, if you're just joining in, gonna give a few moments to get some people on here as we do that, want to cue you in. Next week's gonna be fun as day after Thanksgiving Friday, I'm still gonna hop on here.

Hey there. Welcome. Next week I'm gonna do an ask me anything. And so that format with me being a clinical counselor, I know you don't often get an opportunity to just ask, ask away. And so I'll have the chat going be responding to questions there as well as on some of my pre recorded videos. If, if you, you have questions, feel free to drop a question there and I'll try to collect some things to respond to in the live stream for next week. But today in this live stream, I want to focus on this idea of the simplicity of change.

Being in the mental health field. As a mental health professional, sitting on that side of the couch, I encounter a lot of people walking into my room with some expectations or anticipations of what that time is going to look like or be like. And sometimes it comes with some anxiety and nerves about what is this person going to ask me to do or change or be different. A lot of times it centers around this idea of when we're showing up to a place like a counseling room. The reason we're there is often because we want to see some level of change in our lives, but we're not sure how.

And often we're not sure how is because we have these ideas of what we want our life to look like, but don't quite see it playing out in front of us. And, you know, in my role as a counselor, the way that I try to approach things is that we are all existing within this plane of what it means to be human. We're all exploring that together. And often we get the temptation to look around and look at others and judge our own circumstances in life based on somebody else's narrative and appreciate the Mustache comment.

I'm really leaning into the Minnesota vibes here as we're dipping into the thirties again. And so we have this temptation to look around and judge ourselves and our lives based on other people's circumstances and then start to try to make changes to maybe look a little bit something different. Because looking at our own reality, we see the whole spectrum of what it is to be human. And sometimes that's an uncomfortable reality. So, going back to this idea of the simplicity of change, change is simple because it's always happening.

I'm going to say that again, change is simple because it's always happening. Where change becomes complicated is when we don't allow the changes that we encounter in our lives to speak for themselves. If you can, for a moment, imagine a river. And as you get to know me, I like to use very natural images. So, rivers, forests, camping, hiking, and so if you can imagine a river, and let's imagine that this river is the trajectory of our lives, and we're in that river, so we're almost like the water in that river, and we're going along our stream, and the river will naturally change and curve, and things will come up and things will be lost along that river.

Sometimes we're closer to this side of the bank, and sometimes we're over on this side of the bank. The changes and twists and turns are out of our control. Often the circumstantial things we encounter that change the trajectory of our lives often aren't things that we can physically control. Sometimes we look around and we're not sure if we're going to like the outcome, the trajectory, the direction our river is headed. And so we try to force some sort of change into the direction of our lives in areas that seem to be the answer for what's missing.

And we forget that we're just on this journey. We're not ten steps ahead, we're not over here, and we don't know what's going to come. And so change becomes simple when we become open to the outcome and we look around in our present moment where we are, and we just make a decision towards what's next based on what's important to us. And just like a river, life continues. And that doesn't mean it's easy or it's not bumpy, or it's in our control all the time, but we can let go a little bit and let the river be a river and not try to build a dam.

I'll leave you with that idea here today and see how that relates maybe to your own life and what it would look like to step back and remember that it's okay to let your river flow freely. And whatever outcomes may come upon that journey are equally as valuable, even though they can be out of our control. Thanks for tuning in. It's great to see some new faces on here and connect with you all, like I said. And just to follow up with what I started the video with, next week, I'm going to have an ask me anything.

And so the point of that video is to connect with you all of what your immediate needs are and thoughts, and hopefully around the fact that I work as a clinical counselor. I have an interesting perspective of that being on a certain end of the couch there, so to say. And so I'm curious to hear people's questions, thoughts, curiosities around that world, and I'll answer those to the best of my ability. So, to enjoy your weekend and the upcoming holidays, whatever that may look like for you, and we'll tune back in next week with some more actualized content.

Bye. Thanks again. Bye.