When I was in university, I lived with one of my best friends, Liyah. They loved to cook pasta with homemade vodka sauce. The fourth time I watched them cook, while they were pouring the vodka into the simmering tomato sauce, I asked what chemical reaction causes the vodka to turn the sauce orange. 

Liyah took a deep, agitated sigh, “There’s cream. It’s always the cream that turns the sauce orange.” 

As soon as they said ‘cream’, the previous 3 conversations flooded into my mind. I had asked the exact same question, in the exact same way, multiple times across the past few months. 

“Riiiiight,” I said, “I wonder if this is the time I’ll remember.” 

It wasn’t. 

_________

It seems like a hazard of being a brief and fleshy being that we relive hard won lessons all the time. I can’t count the number of times I’ve found myself in a situation that I could swear I already problem solved my way through. But the reason the self help industry is so lucrative is not because any of the 1000 gurus are saying anything new, it’s because we need constant reinforcement of simple ideas.  

While we can hold space for the repetition of cosmic lessons that your soul incarnated specifically to learn in this lifetime, sometimes becoming more you gets to be simple and effective the “first” time. 

I believe that, as people with prefrontal cortexes, we like complexity and we tend to discount ideas that seem too simple or too easy. For example, for most people being outside tends to help with creative flow. 

When work becomes frustrating and you keep hitting a wall, why is it so easy to dismiss (or forget) taking a walk puts you back in your genius? Why are the little things that help us feel balanced and sane the first things to get tossed when life overwhelms us? 

I have developed solid personal systems to consistently put me in front of the beliefs and the simple solutions that have an outsized benefit in my life. My practice is to be literally steeped in the external conditions that feed me exactly what I need to thrive!