You Are Exactly Where You’re Supposed To Be

“You have a story: does the story serve you, and are you going to be seduced by it, or are you going to have it serve the scripting of something new?” – Lola Wright

We cannot control what the universe throws at us, but we can choose how to frame our own narrative. The temptation to get dragged into survival mode is always present, but that is not how you were meant to live. You are meant to create your own fierce life.

My nine-year-old son recently shared a heart-breaking idea with me: that he wasn’t supposed to be here. I gave him the chance to share why he felt that way, and in our conversation he soon came to his own conclusion: that he really was meant to be here.

The distress my nine-year-old felt is the same kind of ordeal we are constantly grappling with. Unhappiness is found when we feel that we are in the wrong place, that our reality is a mistake and must be changed. In this episode of Find Your Fierce & Loving, I invite you to investigate that thought instead of indulging it. Can you identify what narrative you’re telling yourself about your life? Can you find the reason that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be?

• (00:40) – JP’s birthday
• (04:36) – Unhappiness is found when fighting reality
• (10:41) – Rewriting your story

Do you want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created? We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle, a vibrant membership community rich in opportunities for engagement and transformation. Find out more at lolawright.com/our-circle.

You can follow Lola Wright, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and learn more about my work at lolawright.com.

Chicago born and built, Lola grew up in wealth and privilege, yet always sensed something was missing. She sought out aliveness and freedom in music, immersing herself in the hip hop and house music scenes of 90s Chicago. After finding herself on her own at 23, as the mother of two young children, she became determined to create a new experience.

Lola is an ordained minister with a gift for weaving together the mystical and material, she served for many years as the CEO of Bodhi Center, an organization committed to personal transformation, collective awakening, conscious activism, and community-building. 

This podcast is produced by Quinn Rose with theme music by independent producer Trey Royal.

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Lola Wright (00:01): Personal transformation and collective awakening involve being the most alive, brilliant, inspired, creative, on fire version of yourself. A version that is not consistent with the status quo. My name is Lola Wright, and this is Find Your Fierce & Loving. This podcast is a wake up call, a roadmap back to your holy purpose, an invitation to set fire to the box you’ve been living in and watch it burn.

Lola Wright (00:40): A few weeks ago, we celebrated my youngest son’s birthday, and a couple of things happened that were really, really interesting. Now, something you may not know is that my fourth child, well really each of my kids were not planned between getting pregnant at 18 and my last child, I got pregnant with an IUD. I mean, there’s just a way that life is unfolding beyond our ability to understand. A few weeks ago on the day that we were celebrating my youngest child’s birthday, the story of his birth came up, and he was reminded that I got pregnant when I wasn’t anticipating it. And, that’s been a thematic conversation along the course of his life. And as we were getting ready for bed, he got quiet and I’d say a little solemn. And he said to me, “I feel like I’m not supposed to be here.” Now, when a nine-year-old has that internal dialogue in them, it can first be a little alarming. Well, I can notice the tendency in me as a parent to want to fix it and make it better and, “Oh my gosh, what could that mean? What will that grow into?”

Lola Wright (02:05): Our minds begin to start racing. Perhaps you have had this experience in relationships that you’re in, where someone says something and you want to fix it. You want to change it. You want it to be other than it is. I’ve learned enough over the course of my practice that that is only ever bandaid. So, my husband and I sat with him and got curious. “Tell us more. What has you think you’re not supposed to be here?” And he said, “Well, you had that thing in your body. You didn’t intend to have another baby. So it seems like maybe I’m not supposed to be here.” Oh, can you hear the heartbreak listening to a little person say that? I posed a question back to him. I said, “Well, if you’re not supposed to be here, then where is it you’re supposed to be?” Now, here’s what I want to give you as a sidebar. When we are in co-dependence and someone says something that scares us, we will over-function. We will try to fix them, and the situation, and it will take us off course.

Lola Wright (03:22): But when life shows up in an unexpected way and a question is posed to you that you don’t have a fully formed answer around, the best response is to get curious. So without reacting to his inquiry, while giving myself the gift of a breath and seeing the perfection of this inquiry, I asked him back, “If you’re not supposed to be here, then where are you supposed to be?” And he sat with that, and I could see that his mind was trying to figure it out as if it was a riddle. And he said, “Well I don’t know.” I said, “That’s a great answer.” Again, “If you’re not supposed to be here, then where is it that you’re supposed to be?” And after a couple rounds of getting curious and sitting with him in this inquiry, he said, “I think I’m supposed to be right where I am.” And Nathan and I had this incredible, really quite mystical conversation with our nine-year-old that evening. And after a couple iterations of that inquiry, Nathan said, “You know, J.P., in my experience, unhappiness is always found when I think I’m supposed to be somewhere that I’m not.”

Lola Wright (04:53): So that’s what I want to invite you into today, in this digital gathering space, to consider that the suffering that we experience in our lives is always found when we are resisting what is. When we are arguing with reality. When we are bucking up against our present circumstances and conditions. And of course, this is the great paradox of life. There is something potent and powerful and possible that emerges when you and I can surrender to the circumstances and conditions before us. Not through acquiescence. Not through resignation but through wonder in the same way that we provoked the inquiry with J.P. If a nine-year-old can get such a profound concept, then may we bring that into our practice. I suspect that like me, you’re navigating something in your life that feels ongoing. It feels chronic. It feels perpetual. And perhaps, you’d like it to be other than it is. This is that slogan, what we resist persists.

Lola Wright (06:21): When we are budding up against what we don’t like, what we don’t want, we are amplifying the energy of that thing. So, I love this idea of resistance as a context. In the political sphere or in the movement sphere, we will oftentimes think of resistance as being an oppositional force, but I’d like for us to consider the only thing that we really might consider resisting is our sense of limitation. Resist the tendency to have your mind be occupied by what is against you. You and I can make a critique of something we are experiencing and not have it take us out. See, if Nathan and I had overreacted to J.P.’s inquiry, it likely would have established a greater sense of certainty around his position. Imagine he says to us, “I feel like I’m not supposed to be here,” and we start overfunctioning, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That can’t be true. That can’t be true. J.P., we always wanted you. You’re perfect. You’re perfect. You’re perfect. You’re supposed to be here. Our family loves you.”

Lola Wright (07:48): Now, we did some version of all of that, but it wasn’t as a reaction. Inquire around what it is you’re experiencing discomfort around in your life right now. As I record this podcast in Chicago, we just had 12 inches of snow. After 11 months of being holed up in the house and another 12 inches of snow in below freezing weather, I can find myself in serious states of resistance. I don’t like this. It shouldn’t be this way. I am feeling affected by external circumstances and conditions. I don’t want this. And when I give that loads of attention, which we are all incredibly susceptible to doing, guess what I experience more of? Resistance, irritability, frustration. And so my ongoing practice, which I fundamentally believe is what has enabled me to maintain a sense of peace and equilibrium over the last 11 months, is to continue surrendering to what is. I am right where I’m supposed to be. And when I scare myself, I think that something’s off. Something’s wrong. Something should be better or different.

Lola Wright (09:26): But that is literally what the mind is designed to do. The thinking mind, the ego mind, your identity will work in overdrive to mitigate risk. The resistance that may be of greatest service to us is the one that says, “No, stop it. I’m not going there.” Sometimes we just have to lay down the story. 

Lola Wright (10:00): You want to be more alive. You want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created. We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle. This is an affirming and radical space that will gather weekly, on-demand or live, whatever works best for your life. For more information on how you can engage in Our Circle, visit lolawright.com/our-circle. I’d love to have you with us. 

Lola Wright (10:51): I invited J.P. into that that night, when he said at nine years old, “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.” “Tell me more.” I was a loving presence. I was an available presence and then that’s enough. We’re not going to keep indulging that story. As you indulge the story of what’s wrong where you are, you will always seek more evidence of it. Remember, the nature of my work is that there is a kind order to this universe that goes far beyond the mind’s capacity to comprehend. How do we make sense of multiple states having power outages and being in untenable living situations? You know, we recently saw that. We recently saw unprecedented weather conditions and municipal infrastructures that could not respond effectively to a set of circumstances and conditions. And not as a spiritual bypass, not as a way of denying the impact of our lived experience, how can we say, “What is the gift in this? What is the gift in this pandemic? What is the gift in toxic politics? What is the gift in my life looking as it does?” And not from toxic positivity. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

Lola Wright (12:06): I am inviting you into a radical inquiry around the circumstances and conditions of your life. Every invitation I will extend is inside of the context that there is no oppositional force. That in fact, there is some higher order to reality. That all of life is organized for your evolution, your growth, and that is true on the micro level, and that is true on the macro level. That is true at the level of the personal, and that is true at the level of the collective. So J.P., when you pressed into this time and space unexpectedly, beyond all seeming possibility, in the face of an IUD, how can I not see that as a gift? Now, let us say that you get pregnant with an IUD, and you choose not to move forward with the pregnancy. That is for you to know. You and I have an intuitive capacity that lives in the center of our being. So don’t get hung up or caught up on the particulars of the story. This is my story. What’s your story?

Lola Wright (13:26): If you are this exquisite and extraordinary creator, weaver, builder, constructor, then what are the raw materials that you’re working with that are here to help bring your creative expression into form? If in fact, right where you are, you have all that you need. We are so seduced by living from the outside in, we get caught up in what is called the world of effects. We are so persuaded and seduced and enamored by our five senses, which are brilliant, which are incredibly of service to us, but our five senses live in the world of effects. All effects are preceded by a cosmology of thought, by a world of thinking, creative thinking, not neurotic thinking. Well your neurotic thinking will create a world too. It just may not be the world that you desire. So here we are, these creative, incredible channels to bring forward the life we desire as an offering to humanity. And in this last year, you could say we’ve been in a doctorate level program, discerning, discovering, uncovering where we believe the source of our good is in the world.

Lola Wright (15:09): I was talking to a friend recently, and he said, “I don’t think anybody has any clue what they’re doing in this life.” And I’m like, “You know what? I think you’re absolutely right.” Everyone is just pretending. So, if the world is a bunch of make believe. If the human experience is quite literally like a fake it till you make it scenario, then what are you waiting for? If you and I hang out in our storylines and in our narratives that really aren’t in service of us. They’re disempowering contexts. J.P. and I have had this conversation many times before. This is not the first time. And as his mother, I have a responsibility to disrupt the thought pattern that holds him back and weighs him down. We are threading the needle in this moment. This is why this podcast is called Find Your Fierce & Loving. We are seeking integration. How may I show up to my son as a loving, attentive, gentle presence and not get taken out or seduced by his stories? And so we’re integrating the polarity or the spectrum of us.

Lola Wright (16:26): The kind of love I prefer that I believe is needed is this fierce love. This kind of awake experience. So, I tend to the story in J.P., but I don’t get seduced by the story in J.P. And that’s the opportunity that you and I each have within our own selves. You have a story. Does the story serve you and are you going to get seduced by it or are you going to have it serve the scripting of something new? So, I was a single mother. I was a teenage single mother. Now, what is the storyline I tell about that? If the storyline was, “I’m hopeless, useless, never going to be able to accomplish anything. I’ve royally screwed up my life, and my future is now set in stone.” Then guess what I’ll have? Exactly the context or the consciousness that I hold about the thing. I have recently made some investments in my business, and they have felt scary. They do not provide a predictable outcome. I can hedge. I can sense. I can seed, but I cannot be for sure.

Lola Wright (17:52): The thing I can know is what am I holding as true about this? So when you look at your life, when you look at the circumstances and conditions that you’re navigating in the face of the world, right? The world is screaming all kinds of things and our responsibility is to align with the messages, the possibility, the statements, the consciousness, the context that is in service of our expansion. You are here to grow. You are here to evolve. You are here to notice the stories that are running your life and then ask yourself, “Do these stories serve me?” And for the stories that don’t serve you, slay those things. Get them out of the way. And it won’t happen once. The conversation about how J.P. got to be in this dimension of reality as our son in the face of an IUD is one we have revisited over and over and over again. And that is the work of a practitioner, one who practices. You don’t go to the gym once and say, “I got that.” No, you go over and over and over again.

Lola Wright (19:06): So when I scare myself, can I be with my fear? Can I sit with the feelings? Can I breathe through them? Can I notice what they’re here to inform me of? And, can I create a context or a consciousness that is in service of me? We are susceptible by way of our biology, our physiology, and our psychology to circle the drain. But, you are not here to survive beloved. You are here to thrive. You are here to look beyond the limitations of the world before you and dream, imagine, create. That’s what you’re here to contribute. It is tempting to be taken out by survival. It is tempting to have our stories limit our reality. But this is the exquisite function and capacity of the human experience. You are a storyteller. You are an author. You are a brilliant creator. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. If you find yourself asking that question, “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” notice where the fear lives in your body, pause, and then create a new context.

Lola Wright (20:37): How could it be true that you are exactly where you’re supposed to be with these set of circumstances? With these set of conditions? In this world of effects, looking exactly as it does, now what? You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. Create from here. 

Lola Wright (21:02) If you enjoyed this show and would like to receive new episodes as they’re published, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. Your review helps others find this show. You can follow me at Lola P. Wright on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and learn more about my work at lolawright.com. This episode was produced by Quinn Rose with theme music from independent music producer, Trey Royal. 

Lola Wright (21:47): If the human experience is quite literally like a fake it till you make it scenario, then what are you waiting for?