Follow the Urge!
Welcome to my End of Year Countdown Reflections! During the last days of the year, my shorter blog posts and Instagram videos will prompt you to explore what lies beneath the surface. Even a little reflecting, journaling, and paying attention to your dreams the last week of the year will impact your start to the new year. Click here to read my first post if you missed it: Feeling Peaceful?
Shall we start with a poem?
Drive
Oh no, time to go
For what, for whom, I don’t know
I’m not ready yet
But something is calling me
Get in the car, and just drive
—Me
If you follow me on Instagram (@dlukovich), you might have caught the video two weeks ago of me getting in my car right before I embarked on a road trip up the east coast.
But let me back up . . .
Leaving my hometown was hard. I had traveled, but I had never lived anywhere else—not even for college. If you never leave, it will catch up with you, and I had a feeling that after having finally left in my fifties, the one move down to Florida wouldn’t be enough to quell the pent-up desire to be free.
Shortly after I arrived in my new beach town (eighteen months ago), I began to be tortured by a fantasy of reconnecting with a man. I decided to indulge the fantasy, and it turned into my first short story, which I brilliantly titled The Fantasy. It’s the one-year anniversary of my story, and I hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t already (don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble).
I forgot about the man . . . for a while. I considered that it wasn’t really about him.
Nine months after I had settled into the apartment that felt like a tropical resort, I freaked out when I was faced with the decision about renewing my lease. I felt trapped at the thought of committing to another thirteen months, and I couldn’t afford to go month to month.
How did I deal with the uncertainty? I got in my car two days later and drove up the east coast—all the way to Maryland. Why Maryland? Because that man I fantasized reconnecting with had lived in Maryland—emphasis on had lived there. The fantasy took me on an adventure, which I wrote about in my blog post, titled My Children Pushed Me Out of The Nest. If you haven’t read it, I hope you will soon and share it with others navigating the start to a new life.
Back to last week.
Do you ever feel restless and then judge yourself for not feeling satisfied with where you are? Do you feel urges to do something different and then tell yourself you wouldn’t be responsible if you did them?
These urges are clues to your deepest desires and ignoring them means you’re ignoring the calling from your inner being, the Self, God, or however you name the Source of creation. Holding yourself back models to your children that they should hold back from fully expressing themselves. Holding yourself back works against maintaining your partner’s interest in you.
But what if you don’t know what you really want? I once heard Oprah suggest that knowing what you don’t want was in fact part of the process of discovering what you do want.
That’s where I am right now. I don’t really know what I want—except to be a best-selling author who entertains and heals and lives in a community full of people who care about all human beings. But I do know that I’m not interested in most of what I used to be interested in, which is frustrating.
Last week, I felt that urge. This time, I didn’t freak out, rather I got in my car, and I drove up the east coast—again. I didn’t find answers, but I did gain a little Clarity on the things that don’t interest me anymore.
I felt all kinds of emotions on my three-day trip, including Anxiety. I judged myself for wasting time because I hadn’t found the answer. I think maybe that was the point. I decided that if feeling free to meander was difficult for me, then that was what I needed to practice.
Listen To Your Urges
Try This—Pay attention to the urges (cravings) that are present in your daily life and consider the deeper desires they point to. Journal about what you think the urge symbolizes. An urge to get in the car and drive is not necessarily to be taken literally. On the other hand, following your intuition and taking a spontaneous drive might lead you to a beautiful state park, the lakefront, or another natural setting that might bring a moment of peace. Play around with the metaphor.
For example, if you do in fact feel an urge to get in the car and drive, go ahead and get in the car and make some observations about how you feel. Do you get in the driver’s seat, or do you get in the passenger seat? That can say a lot about to whom you are delegating your journey.
During a two-year time period, cars showed up in my dreams on a regular basis. In the earliest dreams I was not in the driver seat. This seemed to indicate a fear that I was not in control, but it turned out that was the point, that I needed to loosen the grip on my life. Later dreams involved my driving around sharp curves and giving in to driving over the cliff. It would have been easy to interpret this as meaning I needed to have more control over my life, but the dream suggested that I needed to do what I did in the dream—let go.
Try This—Reflect on the urges you’ve felt over the past year, and do not feel shame or embarrassment about them, especially if they are sexual in nature. An urge to have sex with someone other than your partner should not be taken literally. The other person represents a part of you that wishes to be known and valued. I write about this in my newly released book, Your Soul is Talking. Are You Listening? 5 Steps to Uncovering Your Hidden Purpose.
The phallic symbol showed up in many of my dreams, and it changed over time, eventually facilitating the explosion of a creative urge that I had not had the confidence to express or pursue. If your urges are sexual in nature, explore the symbolic meaning. You might be interested in two blog posts I wrote: (1) What Does it Mean When Penis Shows Up In Your Dreams? ; and (2) When is Sexual Attraction Not About Sex?
Try This—Once you’ve identified some urges, and maybe even a theme, use the process I outline in two one-sheets that you can download from my website on the Newsletters+ page.
Want More?
In my new book, Your Soul is Talking. Are You Listening? 5 Steps to Uncovering Your Hidden Agenda, I talk about how to explore what is beneath your spontaneous fantasies (urges or cravings). It is important to realize that literal interpretations of images that emerge from your unconscious are not usually correct or helpful. Your unconscious calls on images that elicit emotional states that are helpful in guiding you to connect with your inner being. Often what we have neglected or judged as bad is calling us.
NOTE: The price of my e Book will go from $.99 to $4.99 January 1st, and pursuant to demand, there is now a hard cover version of my book. Check out my book and see lots of reviews on Amazon. It’s also available at Barnes & Noble and other online distributors.
Thank You!
Give a shout out to Juliana RomĂŁo on Unsplash for the road trip photo.
Thank you for reading my writing. If you like it, please share, leave a comment, follow me on Instagram, be my friend on Facebook. If you know someone who is going through a hard time or trying to bust out of convention, buy them my book or share a link to my coaching services.
Originally Published on https://www.deborahlukovich.com/blog/
