Right now, I want you to think about your absolute dream life.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of self-help people tell you to visualize — dream it, then do it.

Well, I want to challenge you on something. How do you see yourself getting what you want? Do you see yourself grueling for it? Hustling nonstop? Working your ass off? Grinding all of the time?

Now what if I told you that you do not need to suffer or punish yourself in order to get what you want?

There’s this really warped idea in our world that in order to gain anything, you must have a certain level of suffering. “No pain, no gain” as they say. I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit.

We automatically set ourselves up for a lot of unnecessary strife when we drop into that place. “Hard work” does not mean depleting yourself, creating a life of imbalance, and depriving yourself. Somehow, that has become a thing to be praised.

When I first started Kozmic Ryder, I was working constantly. I thought that is what one was supposed to do, I was ignoring my relationships, my mental and physical health, and actually feeling this weird sense of pride about it. Good, I thought, I am hustling.

Meanwhile, there I was preaching about this magical life when all the magic had faded away. I had no time for ritual, no time to listen, no time to surrender this to something bigger than myself. And one day, the hypocrisy of it all hit me, with my hair a mess and left eye twitching, reading my own blog post. So then, my desire shifted, and I quickly strived to go into balance. I made time for my rituals, magic, and meditation. Suddenly, that grind got turned on to the self.

All of that overwork went into overwork on myself. And now here I was doing the magic, but I was still making it about pain and suffering and grueling — you see, work isn’t limited to what we do for monetary support. It comes with working on our bodies, our minds, our spiritual selves. It turns out, it’s really easy to use a lot of effort to try and be effortless.

Now I’m not against the grind, nor do I think that things always come easy. When we truly drop into a place of surrender, suddenly our goal becomes a process of pleasure, even if it gets difficult, because then, it is not about suffering, but about truly stepping into a place of power that you have been preparing for.

It is so easy to hold on to the idea that suffering is what means you are actually doing something. We can get addicted to the feeling of overwork and exhaustion, and having that feeling be the only sign of completion and validation. But when we actually let it go, truly surrender, it takes this ego-driven need and puts it into perspective.

So let’s rewrite this paradigm. Let’s make a new norm in society. Let’s claim our pleasure in our paths. Let’s be gentle in our strength and becoming and watch what unfolds. Stay in your power, my love.