Interior Alchemy by Natalie Kirkpatrick

Negotiating With the Universe

People talk about negotiating with the universe
like it's a cosmic wish list.
Ask for more. Dream bigger. Trust the timing.
It sounds poetic. It's also how people stay stuck
for decades.

Reality doesn't negotiate with your fantasies.
It negotiates with your pattern.

And here's the truth most people can't tolerate.

Life isn't withholding from you.
It's waiting for you to stop mistaking desire for
capacity.

Some people appear to be "rewarded" without
being ready—the relationship, the money, the
opportunity, the visibility. From the outside, it
looks like blessing. Inside, it's a system under
strain.

Because receiving without capacity isn't luck.
It's exposure.

It exposes the cracks.
The shortcuts.
The places you've been performing stability
pretending it's structure.

A life you're not resourced for doesn't expand
you—it unravels you.
Not as punishment.
As physics.

And I know this in my bones.

Every time I've received something before I
had the capacity, it slipped through my. hands
like it never belonged to me. Because it didn't
—not yet.

I had to learn the hard way that the universe
wasn't being cruel; it was being precise.

People don't like to think about this. They want
the universe to grant the wish now and let them
handle the consequences later. But the universe
isn't sentimental. It's responsive.

It mirrors your boundaries.
Your choices.
Your actual nervous system—not the story you
tell yourself about who you are.

Some people "receive" early because the
universe is trying to show them the very thing
they refuse to confront...
their lack of readiness.

The gift isn't the blessing.
The unraveling is.
Because it drags the truth into the room.
You can't keep what your system can't hold.

Capacity isn't mystical.
It's lived architecture.
It's the actual infrastructure of a self that can
receive—and keep—what she calls in.

Capacity is the ability to take in joy without
snatching it back.
To let love in without negotiating your worth.
To have opportunity arrive without abandoning
the very self it came to meet.

Negotiating with the universe isn't about
persuading it to choose you.
It's about becoming the person who can stand
in what you want without shrinking, gripping, or
giving it away the moment it lands.

That's congruence.
That's coherence.
That's the quiet internal shift the universe takes
seriously.

When capacity is there, what arrives doesn't
destabilize you.
It roots you.
It rounds you.
It becomes something you can actually live
inside,
not something you're constantly afraid of
losing.

And that's when negotiation becomes co-
creation.
Not because life finally decided you were
worthy,
but because you finally became a match for
the life you've been trying to call in.