for the first time.
■ THE HARD PARTS DISCUSSION ■
Significant change of any kind requires looking inward and understanding the energy of where we are and who we are. You are the only one who can change your life. I repeat: You are the only one who can change your life. No program, book, or seminar does it for you. The process of change begins the very moment you think about something differently. Some of the steps toward change are emotionally challenging and involve time, thou and action. It may take you longer to work through some stages than others. You will meet resistance at every step, from yourself and from others close by in your world. It is hard enough to deal with your own fears without absorbing other people’s, too. You will have to take extra care not to let other folks derail you on your journey. Remember how far you have come by focusing on the desire for change; things are already in motion. I will try to provide tools along the way, but you will have to do the hard parts. Allowing can be a hard part, at first. Sometimes it may seem difficult just to water the plants, greet the sunrise, or walk the dog, but these simple activities are the place to begin practicing to notice, to appreciate, and to do so passionately—every cell in your body will respond to these feelings of joy.
■ GETTING OUT OF THE WAY ■
Poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about transforming joy from within for the most significant impact. Transforming joy within does not mean blindly jumping right into the action phase of change, but looking before we leap—understanding the authentic needs and desires for change and our motivations for initiating the movement, then getting ourselves out of the way, and just sitting back and letting it happen. We do need to be at peace with where we must begin, which is at the truth.
We are the only ones in the way of getting everything that we want and having a joyful, abundant life. It may be easier to assign blame to everyone who ever made an appearance in your life, but every day, all day, we make decisions with information we experience. We decide not only how to physically respond to people, places, and things but how to respond emotionally and spiritually. We may or may not be conscious of how we are responding. If we are conscious of what kind of energy we are directing at someone or something, it may be a learned, self-conditioned response that does not get us anywhere but into an emotional rut. We have the choice to respond differently each and every time.
The universe will respond to movement or change, no matter how small, conscious or unconscious. It has to, for energy shifts of any size are met with a response—action, reaction. One change in the system changes the whole system itself. Not only will you be different at the end of the new road, but your immediate and the greater universes will be altered along with you. Effortless turnarounds do not exist at this level of spiritual transformation, however. This is the hardest work you will ever do. Once you find your new rhythm, though, you can flow through life with greater ease with tools to cut yourself free from the brambles if you get caught up.
■ REMEMBERING HOW TO WALK ■
There is good reason why most of us cannot succeed with the all-action-oriented “just do it” attitude: it sets us up to fail. Overnight, dramatic change is usually fleeting. You can’t wake up and say to yourself, “I am going to go out and run ten miles today,” if you haven’t moved off the couch in six years. Well, you can say it, but I am not sure how far you will actually get. You can’t run ahead of yourself emotionally, either. “I will never say a mean thing about anyone, and I will definitely never eat another cookie so long as I live.” You are just setting yourself up for disappointment with that approach. If you ignore the emotional and spiritual steps, the change will have nothing to anchor itself to, nothing more than vapor. This is a training or retraining process. Micromovements in focus and emphasis are all that are required. I learned that on a physical plane in yoga class. Micromovements have a tremendous impact on the whole experience. The physical carries over into the emotional and spiritual realms in yoga, and that is true in life as well.
■ I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY KEEP FINDING ME ■
This may sound like a familiar story. Don’t stop reading if you have heard it or lived it before. Read it again just to make sure. After being lied to and cheated on and taken advantage of for several years, a friend of mine left a bad relationship. This was a good final move after several false starts. Her response was to change everything externally in her life. She moved, found new job, and dyed her hair. Great! None of these are bad to do, but neither an assessment nor an understanding of her role in the relationship was ever addressed in the process. Almost instantly she was involved with a new man. Although he was not abusive, she discovered early on that she was playing the exact subservient role she had in the abusive relationship. Her new answer was that it must be that there are no good men out there. Not fair. Nothing had changed because she hadn’t looked inside to see where this attraction and behavior was coming from. She was overlooking her role in the situations. She was attracting the same circumstances and relationships over and over again. Behavior patterns are broken only if we look at our own role in perpetuating them. Learn to recognize familiar situations and emotions. Ask yourself how you feel. If it doesn’t feel right at your core, then it isn’t. When we understand where we have focused our emotional energy, consciously and unconsciously, then we can decide to do things differently today, right this minute. And not just decide but know it, and connect to that decision with our hearts and minds and spirits that we want something different. This is the understanding and internalizing step to meaningful change. Life doesn’t just happen to us. We have a role in it. We are conducting the symphony, and wherever we point our baton, that instrument/emotion is emphasized or spotlighted. We forget that we can redirect the emphasis at any time. When the whole orchestra is playing in harmony and rhythm, with lovely solos here and there, is there anything better? Either we allow it to happen and impact us a certain way or we influence and redirect it.
■ LOOK WHAT I MADE! ■
Here we are on this magical journey and we have the chance to change everything about it all day, every day, with every decision we make and thought we think and emotion we attach to each choice—all that we offer into the world. Change involves courage, truth, and faith. Change does not mean instant cure or happiness, because each alteration, however small, brings with it its own set of lessons and challenges. It requires listening to and hearing yourself and others without filters. Let your critical voices fade away, and live more consciously in the realm of all things possible. Change is challenging and happens whether or not we consciously decide to influence it, so we might as well hop on that bad-boy freight train and see if we can fling ourselves off near the stop we want. Remember when you were little and you made some spectacular glittering piece of art and ran through the house to show someone, shouting, “Look what I made!” That is joy. That is this life.
TOOLS FOR THE JOURNEY
■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■ □ ■
What you are embarking on is really a journey, a journey within the grander one of life. Along the way you may encounter surprises, frustrations, newfound emotions, and, hopefully, great joy. You carry with you at all times a bag of tricks that you may just need reminding of as you set off. The tools are handy and access to them is just a thought away. It is always a good idea to travel with tools and supplies if you are going on a journey—you know, just in case you get stuck in the mud, find yourself lost, or eat bad road food. Three convenient tools when traveling down a path of energy shifts and change are: creativity, faith, and connection. Use these tools throughout your journey, as touchstones or reminders of the spiritual and emotional resources available to you.
■ CREATIVITY ■
Creativity appears like fireflies—blink, the light is there; blink, it is gone. It may only be inklings of new ways of looking at your world, but accessing creative energy is as easy as planning a meal, taking a new route to work, or painting a door in your living space red just because you love the color.
This journey we’re on together is also meant to unlock the creative gifts you were born with. We are all creative, each and every one of us. Sometimes we may just need reminders. Being creative is not necessarily the same as being artistic. Try to let go of any “results-oriented” focus you may hold inside in connection with being creative.