Hey there, Melyssa Griffin here. So welcome back to the Pursuit with Purpose podcast. I am so excited to have you today. I have a topic that I’m actually really stoked to talk about, because a couple weeks ago, I took my boyfriend to this wellness and mindfulness resort for his birthday. I got so much out of the experience for myself as well. One of the things that I really loved the most was, we did this beekeeping class where you put on the beekeeper suit, you go to the bee hives and you learn about bees for a few hours. It was really interesting. I’ve always had this affinity to bees. I actually even have a tattoo of a bee on my arm, so there’s that. I’ve read that the name, Melyssa, means honeybee, so there’s also that. I felt this connection to bees, and it was really powerful to learn more about them because I’ve always admired that they are just so focused on community, on this end goal that they’re creating together, that they’ll even go out of their way to sting someone even though that kills them, to protect this community. I just think that there’s so much power in a lot of the things that bees do. Let me tell you my friend, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. I thought I knew why bees were amazing, but I barely even had any idea.

One thing that I want to share with you today that was something that I got out of this class and that I thought was such a beautiful and meaningful thing that we can apply to our own lives, is this: if you didn’t know, bees are pollinators. So what they do, just to give you a little do debrief on the science here, is they go to flowers and they collect nectar and pollen. They bring it back to their hive and they use that to turn into honey. Now I’m hoping that I’m getting all the things here correct, all the science—not my best subject. So let me know if I’m not, but that’s what they do. They bring it back, they make honey, and the honey is their food source. So they eat the honey. If they have an excess of honey, then we can collect it and bottle it up and sell it and what not. The really cool thing is that flowers have a female part and a male part. If you didn’t know that, they do. Flowers need to procreate just like humans do, in order to further their species along. Flowers, unlike us, don’t have the ability to just get up and walk over to the flower next door that looks kind of cute. They have to wait, because they need to wait for a pollinator, like a bee, to come over and collect their nectar and their pollen, and spread it to other flowers that have the male part. So what happens here is, bees will go and collect their nectar, and then they’ll get pollen all over their little cute bee bodies. And then this pollen, which is kind of like this powdery substance, it gets stuck to their body and then when they go to collect nectar from other flowers or plants that have the male part of the flower, then that pollen just kind of falls on to the flower and it pollinates it. This happens by accident according to the bee, because the bee is not trying to pollinate these flowers. It’s really just trying to get some pollen and nectar for its own hive.

I thought that this was such a beautiful expression in trust, because flowers weren’t born with the ability to move around and pollinate each other. So they literally have to just sit there and trust the universe, and trust that one day, a honey bee will come and pollinate them. If that doesn’t happen, then every flower, plant, fruit, anything that grows for the most part, will go extinct because they don’t have a way to further their species along. That seems like a pretty big freaking deal. If humans had to just sit there and trust that their biggest dreams, that the things that they care about most in their life, that their legacy, the thing that is going to define how they live, was completely out of their hands. How would they live? Would they live differently?

I want you to think about how you’re living. Do you feel like you’re grasping onto your dreams for dear life, strangling them, because you want control and because you’re scared that the expectations that you have might not work out? And then if something doesn’t work out, then it’s almost like this evidence to back up the fact that nothing ever works out unless you strangle it and try to control every little thing in your life. Or are you taking a backseat because you just don’t think that you can do it. You’re resisting. You’re avoiding. You’re not showing up for what’s present in your life because you don’t trust that it’s going to happen. So in what ways right now are you not trusting that the universe is looking out for you, that everything is happening in your favor? How are you resisting or avoiding what’s showing up, what’s present in your life? Is it possible for you to release the control just a little bit more and trust that things are working out exactly as they’re meant to? One of the most powerful conclusions that I’ve come to in my own life, happened about a year ago, where I had basically just this download pop into my head. It said. “If only you knew how beautiful your life turns out, you would never have a reason to be unhappy right now.” You can replace unhappy with stressed, sad, anxious, anything, but really just having that thought that if only I knew how beautiful things were unfolding, then maybe I would have trusted a little more deeply, and maybe it would have made the journey a whole lot more fun.

The special thing about this whole scenario is that when bees pollinate flowers, then it’s literally growing new flowers, new life into the world. When you trust that your life is working out as it’s meant to, that things are happening in your favor, whether they seem like it or not right now, then you are bringing new life into this world too. You are literally blooming. Trust more, surrender more, and live a more joyful life. Thank you my friends. I hope you got something out of this episode. Have a beautiful rest of your week.

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