Seasons of life as we knew it.
Things sometimes must come to an end in order for that change we wish to see to be made.
And sometimes the vehicle for change is not always comfortable and it's not always so welcoming.
And I know that Winter can sometimes feel like a really harsh, lonely period of time.
But I promise you that it is taking us somewhere else, that you will move through this and come out of it a different version of you than you were before.
Look at how much we have changed, look at how much we have done, and we can do it again.
I've had to remind myself it's okay to feel this way.
It may feel like everything as you knew it is coming to an end.
There is something new on the horizon that change is near and change is actively happening.
And it feels like we're not going to make it through, but we always.
How can we source some confidence from the changes that we have made, that we have witnessed and believe that more is coming?
Get excited about what you can picture in your mind, even if you don't see it out here, because that means that it's possible.
Things get so bad or I become so unsatisfied or uninspired or frustrated that I have to refine something, change something, go about it differently.
Even if I'm not ready to change or let go, nature always will for me.
If we are continuing to wake up every day and smell the roses and keep going, we are going to change.
It's just going to happen.
The world is changing around us.
The seasons are changing around us.
We are changing.
Our actions are influenced by our mindset.
If we believe something is possible, we will act as though it is.
If you continue to believe that a change that you want to see is possible and you continue to ground yourself in that mindset every single day, your actions will be influenced by that.
You will ultimately start becoming that change and creating that change.
When that hope is your guide, when that belief that you have within you is your guide, you make these things possible.
We can do it.
And whenever people come together with that sense of hope, anything is possible.
Hi everybody, and welcome to this episode of flowering philosophies.
I am your host, anaya.
Today i have come to you with flowers that i am very excited about with this winter season.
These roses in particular are my absolute favorite color and i love my favorite color.
Purple is my favorite color, but definitely like a muted purple that always catches my eye.
I love that color all year round, but specifically december january february, i get a little more pink.
My birthday I always feel like I really get to embrace my favorite color, which is this sort of muted purple.
So we are celebrating the winter coming upon us with my favorite color.
Here in the United States, we just wrapped up the state and local elections.
If you're listening to this in the future, it is 2025.
It's been a very scary, challenging time for my country, watching horrifying, dystopian-like events take place within the past year.
This November there were many exciting wins all across the country, but obviously the one that most people are talking about is Mamdani's win.
I'm not a political channel.
I'm a little more philosophical here, so I won't get into all of my excitement, but I definitely have noticed this surge of joy and hope coming into the picture these days, especially after that win and all the other ones to celebrate.
I grew up during Obama's presidency and back in 2008 I was so young I guess I was only six years old whenever he got elected.
But even if you don't know what is going on, that feeling of hope and excitement, what you catch on people's faces, their expressions, the energy all around you, even though I was only six years old, I knew something big was happening, that history was being made.
We've witnessed so much change, positively and negatively.
I just sort of wanted to sit and chat here and explore the nature of change, what I've taken away from witnessing such hope on the horizon and excitement, and also devastation and destruction within our world.
We can talk about it in a general sense, like I'm mentioning here, politically and watching historical change over time, but we can also observe it in our personal lives and how much we have changed over time and how much we've grown and how much we've seen and how much we've done.
I like, at the end of the year, to sometimes take a step back and to really have a moment to let things sink in.
You know we're always ready to start with our new year's resolutions and let's keep going and keep building.
But let's take a second.
I this video, in this episode, i urge you to just take a second and think about how much you truly have changed within, maybe the past year, the past five years, the past 10 years.
We are so quick to judge ourselves, to shame ourselves for not doing enough, for not moving fast enough, for not being where we thought we would be at this time.
We can really focus on that and get down on ourselves and a new year is coming.
What can we accomplish this year?
But look at what you have accomplished, man.
Like there is a lot to be proud of and a lot of growth and progress that has been made and that is going to continue to be made.
Whether you like it or not, you have changed, you have evolved, and that is something worth celebrating.
The reason that I bring up any of these political changes as well is because I've noticed within the past year certain individuals being in power, how much destruction has really taken place and how it's affected almost everybody that I know.
Whether it's just the constant fear and paranoia that lives within our cities and our streets.
It's been hard and it's been scary.
And it's scary to witness prejudice or destruction or hate.
But it's very daunting to think about the future.
And I know that my parents and people of other generations have expressed worry and concern for me, for my potential future family and just what is going to happen to our world environmentally socially, everything.
Is this going to be a safe place for us?
It's been a massive concern and me and all of my friends have talked about can we even let ourselves think about the idea of starting a family having kids here, where we are watching what is happening?
It's sad.
It's something that I think we're so used to now and desensitized from just watching, one thing after another happen.
It's like you open your phone and it is a whirlwind of ten new disasters that you didn't even think were possible, but they are.
The desire for change has been so strong throughout my lifetime, and what I've witnessed in my country and with this new wave of excitement and hope for these new state elected officials, is reminding me that there is hope and what happens when we have hope.
During the 2016 election.
I was in my freshman year of high school and Inauguration Day was on my birthday.
It usually is January 20th.
I spent my birthday going to the women's march with my best friend and mom and we had such a great time and i remember feeling like, although there was this sadness and this disappointment and fear, there was also this excitement and this hope and this strength that came together because of that loss or because of that fear.
Because of what was happening, so much hope and strength had to be garnered in order to ignite any sort of change.
And I think that's something that we see so much in humans is change is really only made when something breaks or when something is done differently, or whenever it gets to a breaking point, and it's a nuanced situation right, because so much destruction has taken place so it's hard to sit here and say yeah well, it's going towards something good, because that's absolutely not true.
Any sort of violence warfare destruction, it's horrifying and not justified.
But with that repetition throughout human history of those things taking place, i think It shows us where change is necessary and where we must place our hope for the future, for now, and how we must come together and strengthen that hope over and over again.
And yes, this can be spoken of generally with politics and change and human history, but also on a personal level too, like sometimes scary events or lessons must be learned turmoil and coming to a breaking point before change is made.
Hope is a beautiful thing, but it can be crushed easily.
I've witnessed that sense of hope from my family, from the people around me, from the communities around me, from my country, that hope that we have for some sort of change or some new revolution or something to happen, and that hope fluctuating.
There are times where my hope has been crushed for the world around me, but also in my own personal life.
Things have happened where I maybe don't have hope that they're gonna get better, that they're gonna change.
And so I guess I wanted to discuss hope.
I just really want to emphasize how important it is because without hope, change would not be made.
You have to be able to picture something in your mind and believe in it in order to bring it to fruition and to see people have hope together, large cities and communities, and that hope making real, lasting change.
That's what validates this belief I have here, and I think we can bring it back to a very personalized sense of If there's something that's going wrong in your life or something that you feel like you've given up on over and over and over again, or that you just don't believe you can achieve, I just want to inspire you in the sense that any sort of change, no matter how dramatic or small or whatever, is made from that hope, from that tiny seed of hope that maybe is not validated by our external reality at all, but we have that hope to hold on to, to grow, and the more that we continue to focus on that hope of what is possible, what can we change?
What can we do?
What can i see here?
What can i believe in?
The more that we come back to that hope, the more it represents itself in our everyday life, the more we can pick up on it, the more we can join in with others' hopes strengthen that hope.
What you focus on, I always say this, what you focus on grows.
I'm pretty sure Dr. Joe Dispenza says that.
But if we have a little bit of hope and we continue to focus on that, we can grow it into something monumental and change can be made.
And we are witnessing that right now.
I wanted to make this video as a reminder for you that a lot is going to change.
We can get caught up in that lack of hope, in seeing something that we don't want to see over and over again in the world around us or in our personal lives.
But change is inevitable, it is always going to happen and especially if we hold on to that hope or focus on the change we want to see, we will bring it to fruition.
You can see this pattern in all of human history, but things have to break before they get better, And I've talked about this before, actually in this exact spot.
I think it was in my episode of Get Up and Keep Going.
I highlighted that sometimes it's important to hit that breaking point, even though it feels awful.
It's the thing that sometimes wakes us up towards what we really need to change and how we can do things differently.
When there is a call for change, it is usually because there is dissatisfaction, there is harm being caused, there is a need for change, a call for change.
Therefore, people will garner hope as to what can change and those movements take place.
I've noticed in my personal life, if there's a habit that I'm trying to implement in my life, most of the time I won't really hold myself accountable until I have to, until it gets to a point that I'm like okay, this can no longer happen.
What can I do here differently?
Because it's not working, right?
There's that call for change.
Something's got to give, something's got to change.
Like my sleep schedule is an example, right?
Like I am... sort of naturally a night owl and I have changed things.
I tend to wake up earlier now and get my day started a lot earlier, but I've talked to you guys before about how I had issues with my sleep, because I would just stay up working late into the night and then I would also want to wake up early.
And it was just this whole personal dilemma, right?
But I had to kind of exhaust myself before I made some sort of change.
Maybe we all don't have to go to that type of breaking point, but for myself I've noticed that until I hit a point of such dissatisfaction, that is when change eventually starts to be made.
Change is something we seem to crave.
Even if we fear it, I know we naturally move towards change.
And I'll get into that in a second.
But it wasn't until I was just so tired all the time that I was like, all right, this has to change.
I didn't change it until I was uncomfortable enough and I had to change something.
So then I started going to bed earlier.
I would have never done that out of my own pure excitement and let's go to bed early.
Like that's not my body and minds natural way of being, but I was able to give myself a bit more structure and Take some accountability for this change.
I wanted to see in my life bit of a better routine.
That was a personal goal and hope I had for myself, but I was continuously showing myself.
Oh, it's not possible, I'm not gonna do it.
I naturally want to do this and I just never really put enough work into making that change for myself and until it became so uncomfortable that i i had to.
I don't know if that's the best example, but like we could talk about it with exercise too.
Like i, there were times that i felt really unsatisfied with my level of strength and endurance, that i was like okay, i gotta do something about this.
Let's get back in the gym.
I'm feeling weak, like i had to get to that weak breaking point.
And, like i said, Maybe not everybody functions like this and they're able to kind of understand what they need before they get to that type of breaking point.
But for me, I've noticed that my strongest, most long-lasting changes are made when I don't really have another choice and I have to believe that something else is possible.
I have a poem titled She's a Genius in Disguise, and in that poem I say it's been my design to be crushed, then refined.
What I mean by that is I found myself continuously having to put myself through being crushed, or maybe this is not healthy.
But I've noticed it in myself and a lot of other people and in the general human population.
So that's why we're talking about it, okay?
Like we're talking about what pushes that change.
But I found myself in personal instances where things get so bad or I become so unsatisfied or uninspired or frustrated that I have to refine something, change something, go about it differently.
And then usually my whole life changes.
So of course we don't want to be aiming for that point of destruction or hitting rock bottom.
But don't be afraid if you are in that.
If you are in that uninspired, hopeless sort of state of mind because things inevitably will change, especially if you are feeling down and low because
Here's the thing is yes, of course we can pull out our willpower and make changes in our lives and have hope on our own, but the nature of change is something that we can't even necessarily fight.
One of my friends who has created a lot of change in her life within the past few years.
She is hairstylist and she moved to another city with no clientele, no connections or anything like that.
But she had a vision for what she wanted and she put herself out there.
She's always been really great with her social media and articulating her ideas.
She started promoting her services through that and now, within such a little amount of time, with that dream, with that vision, with that intention, she has cultivated this totally new life and community and job for herself.
That is so admirable and really really cool to have witnessed just that growth.
And she said something to me on the phone where she was like, one moment you're 22 and feel like you have no idea what's coming, what's happening, and then you're 24 and things make a little more sense.
Now, when she first said that, I was like must be nice to feel that way, because I don't feel that way.
I'm still very confused.
But then I thought about it and I was like, you know what?
That is true because, even if I am still confused, it's a different type of confusion than I felt a few years ago.
It doesn't mean that I still don't have the same fears and anxieties about the future, but it means they are different than they were in the past.
I have inevitably grown within the past few years or so that my perception as to what is possible is different than it was before.
It doesn't mean that I'm fearless and have it all figured out, but it means that, based on the inevitable growth that I went through, my perception, my hopes, my insecurities everything is different than it used to be.
I'm 23 right now, but I think about whenever I turned 22, it was before I even did my first Flowering Philosophies episode.
And whoa, how much has changed, right?
Like, as a 22 year old, I was... so confused.
I literally had no idea what I was doing with my life.
But naturally through holding a certain intention and dream and putting in the action that I knew how to and just kind of continuing to have hope in myself or in my future.
Even though I didn't know what it looked like, it did bring me somewhere.
Now, as I'm almost 24 years old, it's crazy.
Wow, this means almost two years of flowering philosophies, but 24.
I am still confused.
I still don't know exactly what's coming next.
I don't know how I'm going to make that a reality.
I have a lot of questions and a lot of doubts and fears, but I still have hope, just like I did back then.
And I'm going to continue to hold on to that hope because I know where it's led me in the past.
And I don't know where it's going to lead me now, but I'm excited to find out.
So I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is like Although two years didn't answer all of my questions about life and all my doubts and insecurities, it changed me.
I have different questions than the ones I had before.
I am naturally changing as time goes on because I'm going through different experiences.
I have gone through some of the most difficult things I never thought I was gonna have to go through within this past year, but that's okay, because it has turned me into a different person than I was before.
Life is always going to rip us through something, some sort of change, whether we like it or not.
If we are continuing to wake up every day and smell the roses and keep going, we are going to change.
It's just going to happen.
The world is changing around us.
The seasons are changing around us.
We are changing.
I know it's easy to like compare ourselves a lot to maybe the changes that are being made around us.
But I had a very comforting thought the other day about my friends and about the changes that I've witnessed in them.
Witnessing how much change is possible through them and through their accomplishments, and even through my parents, like people who are not in their 20s.
They're at a different stage of life and even just witnessing how much they've changed in the past few years is just.
It's inspiring to me, it's shown me oh wait, a second things don't have to stay this way or i don't have to feel so afraid of the future, like i'm gonna be stuck in this season of a lack of hope or fear or discouragement forever, like it is naturally going to change And there's proof of that in everybody around me and in myself and in the world and in the seasons.
That's something I've always found very comforting is like, even if I'm not ready to change or let go, like nature always will for me.
I did an interview recently about my poetry collection.
I will link it below if it's available at this point, but I'm not sure if it is yet.
We talked about what inspires me.
Nature is what inspires me the most, because of its timeless beauty.
There's so much beauty in winter and its death and the death of the plants and the renewal that takes place during this season, i i find it so inspiring.
It's just proof, in fact, that things are always evolving, always changing, always going through their cycles of life and rebirth and death.
Although it's so painful to go through, I don't think that we should fear these harsh seasons of life or these difficult times.
How I've found myself being able to get through them is having the confidence in the nature of change and in the sense of okay yes, this is a hard season that I'm going through, but I know that it is taking me somewhere else.
I know that moving through this season of life, identifying the things that maybe I don't like so much or that I wish to see change in, it's bringing us to that next season.
It's bringing us to that next point.
I've been going through a little bit of heartbreak this year, and for many reasons.
You know, it's not just romantic, it's a lot of things.
And I've had to remind myself, it's okay to feel this way.
It may feel like the end of the world or that everything as you knew it is coming to an end.
But that ultimately just means that there is something new on the horizon.
That change is near and change is actively happening.
When change is actively happening, it's uncomfortable.
It's so scary.
And it feels like we're not gonna make it through, but we always do.
I see it in everyone around me.
I see it in the world around me, i see it in myself that yes, sometimes awful things have to happen and death.
Sorry, this it's We always get deep on this podcast but like yes, sometimes deaths have to take place.
Literal ones and emotional ones, friendships, relationships, seasons of life as we knew it.
Things sometimes must come to an end in order for that change we wish to see to be made.
And sometimes the vehicle for change is not always comfortable and it's not always so welcoming.
And I know that winter can sometimes feel like a really harsh, lonely period of time.
But I promise you that it is taking us somewhere else, that you will move through this and come out of it a different version of you than you were before.
I urge all of us to move through this cold season with confidence, knowing that every day we are being led to a new chapter, a new season and a new version of us that we get to enjoy.
Like I was saying in the beginning of this episode, we can discredit our growth by just wanting to hit this next milestone or to just be different in this way, or to accomplish this.
But when do we get to enjoy where we're at now and what we have done and use that to garner some confidence as we move through difficult seasons of life?
If we can appreciate how we have grown and see how we have grown, it can inspire us to move through these seasons.
Even if you don't want it, change is coming and a lot is going to change in your life.
Not to quote Wise Blood here, but the title of that song did definitely inspire me.
That entire song is beautiful, but she just, you know, talks about like, even if people around you your friends, your family won't stick around, you're gonna get by.
You have what it takes in this life to keep moving.
It hurts and it's scary to be ripped through the changes of life, but inevitably we always will be.
So how can we find confidence in the midst of change?
I think we can source it from the fact that look at how much we have changed, look at how much we have done and we can do it again.
I'm really excited for us guys.
I know it's scary.
The unknown is very terrifying.
And sometimes, whenever we're stepping into the unknown or we are in the midst of it, we can feel hopeless and like we don't know what's coming next.
But I promise you something beautiful is coming.
And the more we can continue to come back to that hope of what we wish to see, the changes we wish to see within ourselves, within the world around us we make it possible.
By believing in it, by having that hope for ourselves, for a better future.
We can appreciate where we're at right now when we look and see how much we have evolved and changed.
It will continue to keep happening.
Better things are on the horizon, and this doesn't mean we should celebrate destruction or what we don't like to see, but it means that even in the midst of destruction, even in the midst of terrible things happening, humans have this ability to have hope or to see a different reality being possible, that we create it.
We create what we believe is possible, so keep believing.
I know that can sound repetitive, but please please, Keep believing in that dream for yourself, even if it's not being validated in your external reality.
I need you to keep believing in it.
I need you to keep grounding yourself in that hope, because we have proof that that does create change and you can can create that change in your everyday life and in the lives of the people around you.
When that hope is your guide, when that belief that you have within you is your guide, you make these things possible.
We can do it.
And whenever people come together with that sense of hope, anything is possible.
And we're witnessing it.
We are witnessing change.
We are witnessing hitting rock bottom and change being made because of that.
So don't be afraid of this depressing season of life you're in right now, because I promise you it is taking you somewhere.
Like I said, we don't really have control over the fact that we're going to change, but we do have control over our mindset and the intentions we put forth as we continue to move through life and continue to create and make change.
What is your intention?
What do you believe in?
What can you picture for yourself?
Get excited, man.
Get excited about what you can picture in your mind, even if you don't see it out here, because that means that it's possible.
And that means that you get to create that reality for yourself.
I'm telling you.
I'm telling you from personal experience.
My dream when I was little was to be making money from creating poetry.
I have made that dream a reality, and it is not because everyone was saying yeah, that's totally possible.
No, if anything, it was like, good luck with that, sweetheart.
That sounds kind of like a out there dream.
I don't know if you would consider it to be, but I always did.
I always felt like my dreams were so outlandish.
But the thing that I kept coming back to over and over again was that reality I could picture for myself in my head, even whenever people were telling me it's not possible, even when my external reality was the opposite of that.
I didn't really have much hope in the direction of my life changing or my dreams coming true.
There was a tiny seed of hope based off of what I could believe to be possible, and I just continued Coming back to that over and over and over again.
Our actions are influenced by our mindset.
If we believe something is possible, we will act as though it is.
So if you continue to believe that a change that you want to see is possible and you continue to ground yourself in that mindset every single day, no matter what your actions will be influenced by that, you will ultimately start becoming that change and creating that change and influencing that change.
I am amazed by the change that I am seeing around me.
I am amazed by my friends and my community and the change I am seeing around me.
I am amazed by my family people who come from a totally different culture and country and mindsets and beliefs seeing their ideas about mental health or other important issues change.
And if you don't feel as though you've changed so much over time, I can guarantee you do a little exercise like really go back to yourself.
You can pick the amount of time maybe it's six months ago, maybe it's a year ago, maybe it's three years ago, five years ago and Think back to that version of you and what their insecurities were, what their fears were, what they maybe didn't think was possible, and remind them and look at the gap between that version of you and now.
What has happened in that gap?
What has inevitably changed?
What have you willed into changing?
What has happened in that gap of time?
Maybe it's a week ago.
I don't know.
I think about it with myself.
Nine months ago.
If you told me some of the things that were happening right now were happening in the world around me or in my personal life, I would have probably fainted.
I would have been shocked, but it's happening and it's going to continue to happen.
We are going to continue to be knocked off our feet by surprise and going to continue to be working towards those changes that maybe we've been working towards for a long time.
But I promise you, none of your efforts, your intentions, your hopes and your dreams are in vain.
They are coming to fruition in ways that you can see and ways that you can't see.
Continue to hold on to that intention.
Continue to hold on to that hope and that knowing that things are inevitably changing.
There's nothing to fear will go through another phase of life, another season of life.
They are always coming and they are always going, and that's a sad thing and, like i said, change is kind of jarring and scary, but we crave it as human beings.
I was thinking about how i am living in my own apartment for the first time ever my own place.
I know I talk about this a lot, but it's a very big part of my life and year.
This was a fantasy of mine for years, probably for the past five years.
When I would think about my grandest dream, it was having my own place like this, being able to fill it with my own little trinkets and flowers and candles.
And I look back at diary entries and journal entries, just wishing and praying that that would be my reality.
It didn't happen in the blink of an eye.
There were moments that felt like it was never going to happen and that I was so far away from that reality.
But I continued to hope for that.
And I continued to believe that it was possible.
I would picture it in my mind.
What would that feel like?
What would that be like?
Okay, that's not my life right now, but one day it can be.
And some people might think that that's a small dream, but to me, it really wasn't.
It was like a huge luxury and huge big deal if I could do that for myself.
Here we are, here we are.
But you know, the frustrating thing is we're always changing.
So now my biggest fantasy and dreams, they've changed.
They're not this anymore.
And that frustrates me a little bit, because sometimes I wish that I could just be filled with that euphoric realization of I've made my dreams come true.
Look at this reality I'm living in.
But that's not really how us humans work, right?
Like, of course I hold gratitude for what I've accomplished.
But I'm also always trying to go towards the next thing.
What can I do now?
Okay, I accomplished this.
What's next?
Almost fearing what's next, or fearing that I'm not doing good enough or that I'm not getting to that next step yet.
And it's just like that is naturally going to happen, especially if we continue to have that drive towards what we want.
But let's take a look at what dreams we have made come true and what we have done and yes, it's so easy to disregard that and look at how much has not changed and how many things have happened since then that, you know, cause us to lose hope.
But remembering the changes that have been made, the power of hope that came together to make those changes possible, how can we source some confidence from the changes that we have made, that we have witnessed and believe that more is coming?
Things must break before they get better.
And I don't know why that is.
And maybe sometimes it doesn't always have to be that way, but it definitely has rained, to be true, in many circumstances, including my own personal life.
And as I continue to look forward and hold hope for my new dreams and new fantasies.
I sit here and I find comfort and confidence in the fact that I have made significant changes in my life, and they have happened.
They have also happened, naturally without my force and allowing that to send me on my journey as to whatever I'm trying to change and move towards next, but realizing how much change has been made, how much has happened and been done, and allowing that to inspire me as I move forward.
Alright you guys, I have gone late into the evening here making this arrangement.
She was kind of falling apart and we were deconstructing our roses and I'm pretty happy with the shape now.
I'm mostly excited to watch the gladiolus continue to bloom over the next few days.
Thank you for sitting and chatting with me as I make this lovely arrangement for my home and reflect on the changes we have made and what there is to look forward to.
Don't forget you guys that we are always on this journey together.
I am so grateful for you.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for being here.
I can't wait to chat with you again very, very soon.
Bye.
