The Only Way Out is IN.

My Blooming Soul ethos (which I also apply to my songwriting) begins with acceptance. 

The thing is, you probably can’t get to where you want to go from where you are right now in just a day.

There will probably be many steps in between now and then. You WILL get there. But you must walk the path.

I like to call it climbing the emotional ladder. It’s gotta be done one step at a time. One of my favorite examples I like to give for this step is how anger is often an improvement from sadness. It has agency, it has power. But, you don’t want to stay there. Keep climbing! 

In order to do that you have to meet yourself where you are - where you actually are. That means: Acceptance!

Don’t judge yourself for the emotions that you’re feeling.

They’re necessary to your path. Judging our emotions can really affect how we process them, or not. Or even if we SEE them in the first place. Lean into acceptance, lean into surrender. Going IN is the only way OUT. 

My favorite Eckhart Tolle book is A New Earth and at the end of it, he explains the Three Modalities of Awakened Doing. They are:

1) Acceptance

2) Enjoyment

3) Enthusiasm.

“Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which then flows into what you do. On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which it enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance.”

So even if you cannot enjoy what you are doing, truly accepting what you’re doing is a beautiful act of peace and self-love. 

I go deeper into this on my new podcast episode this week. Come and join the conversation

Blooming Soul Practice

I’d like to invite you to reflect on

1. What emotions you have a hard time accepting, and therefore a hard time moving through

2. What song can support you in accepting or going INTO that emotion? It might even be positive emotions, maybe you’re resistant to feeling proud of yourself or believing you deserve love (Lizzo is good for that, Diana Ross- not so much). Let music help you soften your resistance. 

Share your experience with me - tag me on Instagram (@selfhelpsongwriter) with the song & the emotion!

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If you want to hear more about climbing the emotional ladder and my songwriting origin story (and MORE), listen or watch Sydney Weis interview me on the most recent episode of her Seek the Joy Podcast on Youtube, Apple, or Spotify. 

How I wrote "Inhale Exhale (You Got It Now)"

My inner journey through the birthing of my upcoming single “Inhale Exhale (You Got It Now)” is one I think a lot of us are going through right now. Yes, I’d come a long way and was generally happy. But I got stuck in this cycle where everyday I found a new reason to criticize myself, and everyday I found my way back home to me. I’m glad I could find my way back to my center so reliably, but GEEZ it was prettay unpleasant and frankly, inefficient, to have to do this shit every day. Like, I know how the story ends now, why do I always start at the beginning? I felt like Sisyphus, only stupid & self-imposed. After all I’ve been through in situations I can’t control, why is THIS internal battle now keeping me from enjoying my life. Am I stupid? Then, I realized- I’m doing it again! Right now! Now I'm criticizing how critical I am towards myself- when will it end??? So I did what I knew I must do. I softened. I relaxed. I gave up. Surrender, I think they call it. I wanted to finally alchemize all this into a song (because that’s how I process things), to help me gain closure through a more complete understanding and finally close the cycle. I grabbed my Taylor guitar and started playing the chords of some of my favorite songs, most notably Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Snow, Hey Oh” and “She’s Kerosene” by the Interrupters. They are A minor, F, C, G (how I play them anyway, I think the original “She’s Kerosene” was in Bm… but, I digress). Super sweet and simple. The words flowed so quickly which usually means I forget immediately, but this time they were so succinct, so simple, so poignant that they came clearly back again so I could write them down. It felt like I was writing on behalf of so many souls who are waking up to the fact that we are allowed to be happy now. We are allowed to take care of ourselves and anchor into our beautiful optimism. 

If you want to hear me talking about this (not by typing but with the sounds from my face hole) you can listen to my podcast episode about it. I go into painstaking detail and yet barely cover what went into it. Such is art.

Love you for reading!

As always, let me know if you resonate! I love our conversations <3