How to stay at the center of your life
When your helpers become obstacles.
Last year, during my mushroom journey, one of the ideas that came through really clearly was this: everything in my life is supposed to be my helper, and I am supposed to stay at the center of my life. At first I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but the more I sat with it, the more it started making sense.
A helper can be a person, a pattern, or an experience that is meant to support and add to your life. It may challenge you, stretch you, or ask something of you, but overall it still feels like it is in service of your growth. It is still contributing something meaningful. It is still helping you become more yourself, not less.
When helpers are doing their job, life usually feels more harmonious. Not necessarily easy, but balanced. There is a sense of flow to things, like people and experiences are in their proper place and your life is moving in the way it is meant to move. Even the things that challenge you do not feel like obstacles. They still feel like part of the support system of your life, not something pulling you away from it.
As I started looking back at different seasons of my life, I could see how this idea applied to my own experience.
There were people, habits, dynamics, and experiences that at one point served a purpose, supported me in some way, or were even deeply meaningful, but over time they started taking up too much space. They stopped feeling like something that added to my life and started feeling like something my life was organizing itself around.
There have definitely been times in my life when something that was supposed to be a helper slowly became a distraction, when something that may once have had a place became too central. It was taking too much energy and giving too little back. It was no longer enriching my life. It was overshadowing it. It might have been a relationship, a job, a certain fear, an identity, a habit, or even an internal struggle. And once that happened, everything started feeling off.
Too much of my energy started going there. My attention started going there. My thoughts kept circling there. Instead of living my life, I was managing that thing, thinking about that thing, recovering from that thing, trying to resolve that thing. And that felt exhausting.
When helpers take the center stage
This is not always dramatic and obvious. Sometimes it just feels like life becomes heavier. Less free. Less honest. You feel more drained than nourished. More preoccupied than alive. Something starts to feel off balance, even if you cannot fully explain why yet. It is as if the story has quietly reorganized itself around one person, one problem, one longing, one habit, or one dynamic, and now you are no longer fully at the center of your own life.
Usually, we know that things are out of harmony before we fully admit it. We feel it as resentment, dread, heaviness, confusion, or that subtle feeling of being trapped. We feel less like ourselves. Less creative. Less spacious. Less available for our actual life. Instead of feeling open and connected to our own movement, we feel consumed by managing whatever has become too central.
But there is a fine line here, and it can be easy to miss: not everything difficult is wrong. Not everything that stretches us is misaligned. Some things are demanding and still deeply worth it. Some relationships ask a lot from us and still feel meaningful, loving, and life-giving. Some jobs are exhausting in a season but still clearly connected to something we value.
So this is not about only keeping what is easy. It is more about paying attention to the harmony and flow.
Guiding questions for experimenting with this idea:
What in your life is actually helping you?
What adds to your life in a real way, even if it sometimes challenges you?
What supports your growth, your freedom, your honesty, your aliveness?
And what has quietly become so central that you are starting to disappear around it?
What is taking too much energy, time, or emotional space?
What feels less like support and more like a drain?
I do not think these questions are meant to make us judge everything too quickly. Sometimes they are just a way of helping us tell the truth. Sometimes they help us see that something was right for one season and is no longer right for this one. Sometimes they help us notice that we have slowly handed the lead role over to something that was only ever supposed to be in a supporting role.
So then, how do you stay at the center of your life?
Start by naming the obstacles. Not vaguely, not conceptually, not with a lot of over-explaining. Just name it. The person. The habit. The fantasy. The fear. The job. The dynamic. The old version of you. Whatever it is, call it what it is.
Get honest about the cost. What is this taking from me in real life? Is it costing me peace? Energy? Self-respect? Clarity? Creativity? Freedom? Is it making my life smaller? Is it pulling me away from myself?
Then minimize the role it gets to play. Maybe that means giving it less attention. Setting a boundary. Pulling back your energy. Not feeding the obsession. Not structuring your whole day around it. Delaying the response. Leaving the group chat. Canceling the plan. Saying no. Letting something be less central. Taking one real step that reminds you that it no longer gets the starring role in your life.
Return to what supports you. Nourishing experiences that feel alive. Taking care of your body. Prioritizing your creativity. Intentionally making space for your peace. Committing to helpful routines. Engaging in forward movement in any way that feels true to you.
I think that is the part I keep coming back to: being at the center of your life is not just about removing what drains you. It is also about choosing what strengthens you. Choosing what nourishes you. Choosing what helps you feel more like yourself.
I am offering this more as an idea to experiment with in your own life, than a fixed truth. And maybe, if you notice that one of your helpers has taken center stage, this can be a gentle way of finding your way back to yourself.
Cappuccinos are my love language ☕️ 🫶🏻