Journal Entries: The Trap of Perfect Alignment

[00:00:00] Welcome to Soul Alive Radio. This is where your spiritual intelligence is amplified. Your spiritual gifts are activated and your higher self gets the mic. When you live in full energetic alignment, your current ceiling becomes your floor. It’s time to be soul alive Last fall. My husband’s best friend is French and he and his wife were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary at this spectacular location in La Bowl, which is on the ocean in Brittany, in France.

[00:00:38] And they are really just beloved people. They, I wish I had as many friends as they do. They have so many friends and they like to host these. Big magnificent parties and they also like to start their parties late and stay up really late. And I have to tell you, I really hate staying up late. I hate it. If you wanna have a meeting with me, I would choose 5:00 AM over, like even 8:00 PM so I know you night owls are like, what’s wrong with this lady?

[00:01:11] And my husband’s a night owl, so it’s kind of funny. Um, but I. It feels so bad in my body the idea of staying up very late. Their parties go all night. They literally go till 5:00 AM And to be honest, my husband’s six years older than me and this, this group of people are all my age and older and sometimes much older.

[00:01:38] And I’m always like, where did they find this energy? I, I don’t have it. I just love to be in bed before 10:00 PM I can’t even tell you. It just feels so good to my soul. So the idea of being up late was very distressing for me. And in the past when we’ve been invited to these parties, I have gone to bed early and I’ve told my husband, please, please, you are the night owl.

[00:02:06] You stay out late. Take one for the team. You know, just say Allison. You know, whatever. I shouldn’t have to justify it, but whatever. Allison had to go to bed early for whatever reason. She was tired. Okay, fine. And um, you know, you stay out late, you stay out till four or 5:00 AM but every time my husband, like the last three big parties we had gone to, my husband was like, no, no, no.

[00:02:31] I wanna go to bed with you. And it was like 11 o’clock, which is about as, as late as I like to go. So my husband did go to bed early with me and then we became the party. Poopers almost. Maybe persona non grata is a little, uh, strong, but definitely it was not appreciated that we had gone to bed so early because they had the big party and, you know, uh, you know, this is my husband’s best friend, so we should like stay up to the bitter end with everyone else.

[00:03:04] So I said to myself, right. They’re having their big 30th wedding anniversary. Everybody’s coming. Huge blowout party. I know it’s gonna go all night. I am going to stay up. I said, I am not gonna be the party pooper for once. And I set the intention that I was gonna stay up till three 30. ’cause I figure, you know, I, I honestly can’t.

[00:03:29] Four and five, that was just too much for me. So like, I was like, if I make it till three 30. That, you know, that’s something that I can do that We had a babysitter for Freya, so she was taken care of. So then the party is drawing near and near and I was getting so much anxiety at the idea of staying out till 3:30 AM I know it’s crazy.

[00:03:56] I’m actually a really high energy person who functions very well on small amounts of sleep, so I don’t even really know well. Let me rest that. I know exactly where this was coming from. I was living in fear of going coco.

[00:04:17] You know, going out into non-alignment of my energy and what it was doing, it was sabotaging my overall experience to having this beautiful long weekend in France. It was September, the tourists were gone, but the weather was perfect. They live right on the ocean in this. A city called Lebo. If you guys know of it, you know how it’s just absolutely spectacular.

[00:04:46] It’s actually where all the Parisians go when they go to this. Not all but Parisians. A lot of Parisians go to La Bowl when they wanna go to the ocean. So it’s kind of like a hidden jewel. I mean, maybe that’s a French person would never call it that, but I think it’s a hidden jewel for tourists outside of France.

[00:05:06] A lot of non-French people don’t really know about it. So I find it to be this spectacular place. It was gonna be this really fun party. This is a very fun couple. They have friends from all over the world. They have really cool, neat friends who are just have great stories and lived interesting lives. So this was supposed to be this like amazingly fun weekend, and all I was doing was sitting around stewing and worrying that.

[00:05:36] I had to stay up late, so it was kind of ridiculous. So the party comes and it’s totally fun. We have a blast. I’m staying out. It’s midnight. It’s 1:00 AM The party’s still raging. You know, there’s a dj, there’s a dance floor. It’s 2:00 AM and I’m starting to feel a strange emotion that I didn’t expect. I start to feel proud of myself.

[00:06:05] It may sound silly. I know that I’m not doing anything like so exciting. I’m not curing cancer. I’m not, you know, doing anything major, but for my little existence. Who is so devoted to an early bedtime, I was like, oh my gosh, I’m doing this, I am doing this. And I feel okay. I feel okay. I really, really, really wanna leave.

[00:06:28] I’m also a two line. I need a lot of alone time. I’m a triple split definition, so that means I have a lot of openness in my chart, in the sense that I’m like sucking up the energy of everyone in the room. So there were a lot of people in the room. I’m a completely open emotional solar plexus, so I feel everybody’s feels also starting to feel a little bit overstimulated from the sheer amount of people.

[00:06:54] But I was doing it. I was proud. My husband and I were dancing. Then it got to 3:00 AM and then I was like, okay, I really wanna go home. But I said I would make it till three 30. And so my husband was also getting quite tired, so we just sat there. We found a place and we sat there. You know, I don’t drink alcohol, so I had been drinking like ginger ale and water the whole night.

[00:07:18] So I was just, at that point, I was just hydrating drinking water. And watching people dance and have a good time. And then the clock hit three 30 and I said, okay, I think we can leave now and not be labeled Epic Party poopers. So we get up. To say goodnight to everybody. And everybody, for the first time ever at one of these parties was like, okay, goodnight.

[00:07:44] You know, have a good sleep. Whilst before it was always like, oh my God, you’re leaving so early. What’s wrong? This is a party. You traveled all this way and you’re already leaving. And so it was always a big drama before, but this was the first time that people were just like, wishing us good night. So. We got into our taxi.

[00:08:06] We had headed home. By the time we got home and in bed, it was probably about 4:00 AM and then Freya, bless her. At that point I just, I remember that she had been in a little bit of a, a habit of getting up around 6:00 AM so I thought, oh God, she’s probably gonna be up in two hours. But hey, I signed up for this.

[00:08:26] I’m ready. So I went to bed about 4:00 AM and bless Freya, and also bless myself because I have the farmer curse to get up early. Even on the days when I don’t want to get up early, even the days when I wanna sleep until nine or 10, I literally like can’t. So I thought, well, either Freya Iss gonna wake me up at six or I’m just gonna get up naturally and you know, I’ll figure it out tomorrow.

[00:08:52] I will figure it out if I’m exhausted. It’s okay. Lo and behold, Freya sleeps until 8:00 AM So I got four solid hours of sleep, and as I mentioned earlier, I function well actually. So these fears are very silly. I function well, not night after night after night, but once in a while on a small amount of.

[00:09:14] Sleep. I actually, it doesn’t affect me that much and I think the reason why is because I maintain my energy so well that I bounce back very quickly from a night or even to of disrupted or a lack of sleep. So I got a solid four hours and that’s all I really needed. I woke up the next day, we went and had breakfast and coffee, and the next day was amazing.

[00:09:39] I, I’m someone who likes to party, you know, with my non-alcoholic beverages during the day. So if you have a party and you wanna invite me over, let’s start our party at 2:00 PM. I love a day party. And that way by eight o’clock at night, it can be winding down and we can all be like getting into our, uh, meditative positions and getting ready for bed.

[00:10:00] I know I sound like a lot of fun. Um, but think about that. 2:00 PM parties, everybody can go to bed early and still have a full long, six to eight hours together anyway, so then okay. That France passes. Then we have a new trip on the horizon, and I just got back from this trip and I was confronted again with the alignment trap.

[00:10:30] Okay, so we get home from France, life moves on, and then lo and behold, a few weeks ago, I get confronted again with the trap of perfect alignment. Because we had decided for Frey’s winter break, which is one week that we were gonna fly from the Hague to Vancouver, Canada. And it’s a long story as to why we decided to do Vancouver.

[00:10:57] I mean, it’s a beautiful city, but normally I wouldn’t fly so far for just one week. You know? Normally I would. Stay, you know, it’s a 10 hour flight and a nine hour time difference. So normally if I’m gonna do that kind of travel, I wa I would wanna stay at least 10 days, if not at least two weeks. For another journal entry, I will share why we were going to Vancouver.

[00:11:22] But the point is it’s a beautiful city and we wanted to go skiing with our family to Whistler. So we booked this seven day trip and with a nine hour time difference and a 10 hour flight. And I started to get really worried about the jet lag, and I started to get really worried about me getting out of my perfect alignment cocoon.

[00:11:47] And I started to regret booking the trip. I was, um, saying to my husband, this was too much. We shouldn’t have done it. What was wrong? We spent all this money and we’re just gonna be exhausted. And I was really sabotaging again, this experience of going to this beautiful place in British Columbia going to Whistler, which is one of the greatest places to snow ski in the world.

[00:12:14] And here I was self sabot my experience before it even started yet because I feared. My trap, I was in my trap of I can’t lose my alignment. So the trip arrives and the flight there was lickety split. We get to Vancouver, it’s amazing, amazing city. The first time I’d ever been there. And of course, you know, the first day the jet lag was pretty bad and I’m just gonna sort of offer the bottom line up front.

[00:12:44] My jet lag was pretty bad the whole time because. I am a classic morning person, so therefore, when I travel west, which means you’re gonna have the desire to wake up earlier than normal, that’s when I experience jet lag the worst. When I travel east, I experience basically no jet lag because it’s very easy for me to fall asleep at night.

[00:13:10] Which, you know, usually when you’re traveling east, you can’t fall asleep at night and then you don’t wanna get up in the morning. And because I’m always able to get up in the morning with relative ease, I can get up easily in the morning. So traveling east is easy. Traveling west for me is not the best.

[00:13:28] So. We were traveling west and I basically have pretty solid jet lag the whole time. But remember, I do well on not a lot of sleep. So again, why am I so worried about all this? And then the trip just starts to unfold and it starts to unfold, and it was. Just magical. Vancouver was magical, and whistler was just doubly magical.

[00:13:53] We met my older kids in Vancouver, Sophie and Alexander, who typically live in Maine and we live in the Netherlands, so we got to all be together as a family of five and just do this extraordinary ski holiday. And I hadn’t been snow skiing in many, many years, so I was very rusty, also nervous about that.

[00:14:14] But I got my ski legs back pretty quickly and Freya was at ski school all day. Um, Sophie is recovering from surgery, so she was hanging out. In Whistler Village reading books going to the pool. She was, she was not skiing, but she was kind of doing her own thing. And then my husband and my son Alexander, are very, very good skiers.

[00:14:37] So they were up at the top of the mountain doing the, you know, double black diamonds as I was on all the green, green easy slopes for me. But what was amazing was that normally when we’re in a family holiday, I don’t get a minute alone, every parent can relate to this. And I have a two line in my human design, which means I require a fair amount of alone time to feel this alignment.

[00:15:03] Right? So that’s always another thing that I can feel as part of this trap. When I’m on a family vacay and I know I’m not gonna get a enough alone time, that also takes me out of my alignment and I can fear that before it even happens. So that was, you know. Part of my fear before this trip, and it’s really part of my fear, is before any family vacation where I know I’m not gonna have a lot of alone time.

[00:15:26] Well, uh, as a little, I wasn’t even expecting this. Freya was at ski school all day. Pete and Alexander were doing their own thing. Sophie was doing their own thing and I got two full days of snow skiing all by myself. And you might be thinking, well, that doesn’t sound very nice, Allison. You might be a social skier, but I loved it.

[00:15:52] I freaking loved it and it was so beautiful and I just went at my own pace and I met so many interesting people on the chair lifts. I was chatting from with people from all over. I was helping the ski instructors with like the little four year olds. They were riding with me on the lifts, um, kind of making me nervous ’cause they were so tiny.

[00:16:14] I was like, oh my God, I’m gonna hold onto you so you don’t fall off this lift. But it was just. Truly magical. We had perfect weather. The sun was shining. It was just a little bit below freezing. Um, I, I just had this sort of transcendent experience on the slopes in the little area. I had found a little area that was like, ’cause it’s very large, right?

[00:16:42] So I’d found this little area where. It was just like perfect for my level, and this was kind of the area I stuck to. And for whatever reason, there was hardly that many people there, and my husband had said where they were skiing, it was very, very busy. I had found this little kind of patch, uh, where there just weren’t, it wasn’t as busy, so it was just quiet.

[00:17:04] It was solitude. It was magic. And in the evenings, you know, we went to the hot tub in the hotel and did a cozy dinner. You know, I don’t know if, uh, if there’s any skier listeners after a day of skiing, it’s just so cozy to do the apre ski and just, you know, put on your wool sweater and you’ve been skiing all day, so you’re okay.

[00:17:27] You know. Give yourself permission to have that cheese fondue, ’cause you’ve burned so many calories that day or whatever, that apple cake for dessert. And we had these cozy dinners together and it just ended up being this truly magical experience that I had been fearing and had anxiety over for weeks because of the trap of perfect alignment.

[00:17:53] And what I really learned from these experiences. Was that life doesn’t happen. The truly memorable moments don’t happen when you’re getting your eight hours of sleep and you’re in the cocoon of your house and everything’s just on a, you know, Swiss railway timed rhythm. It’s when. You flew halfway around the world for a week and you’re on a mountain by yourself in Whistler, and I had gotten up the last four mornings between three and 4:00 AM because of the jet lag, and I was tired and it was magnificent.

[00:18:44] It’s when you’re in France with people from all over the world dancing. To crazy Euro pop songs until three 30 in the morning. It’s those times when you’re out of your perfect alignment that you remember it, that it sticks out, that you heal, you learn, you grow, and sometimes you just get out of alignment because you’re not giving yourself permission to go to bed early or you’re pushing yourself too hard.

[00:19:15] But there’s the gift in that. It’s the feedback. This doesn’t feel good. What needs to be healed? What can I learn? What wants to shift into something higher? My invitation for you this week is to reflect. Do you ever fall into the trap of perfect alignment? Do you fear an upcoming experience? Because you’ll have to go to bed late.

[00:19:45] You’ll be around a lot of people. It’ll be loud. There won’t be time to meditate, there won’t be time to journal. There won’t be time for the spiritual practice. How can you lean into it, find ways to make it as aligned of an experience as you can, and just be okay to stay up from time to time to three 30 in the morning.

[00:20:14] That’s a wrap for this week, my friends. Until next time, may you be Soul Alive. If this episode stirred something deeper, you’ll find a link to book a Soul Blueprint connection. Call in the show notes.

00:24 Late Night Party Dread

03:04 Commitment To Stay Up

05:41 Party Night Breakthrough

08:04 Aftermath And Day Parties

10:18 Vancouver Trip Anxiety

12:27 Jet Lag And Magic Unfolds

13:53 Whistler Solo Ski Bliss

17:53 Lesson On Perfect Alignment

19:29 Invitation