I had spent so much of my life trying to please other people, it was natural for me to want other people to get on board when I set off on the journey to authenticity, I wanted them to validate who I was becoming.
So I would defend and reason, maybe even my blog was a part of that. My self esteem, or self worth, couldn’t carry off a big moment of vulnerability without some sort of justification and approval. As I started to write, I began to quickly understand why I felt like that. Over and over my blog would start from the standpoint of us coming into this world with talents, traits, and purpose even, and yet being treated as empty vessels by those who ‘knew better’. We have been brainwashed into a lack of self worth in various well-meaning guises. This week I was talking to a young adult who is struggling with their academic results and having lots of arguments with his parents, it reminded me about how important this issue is. Getting a good education is a drum many well-intentioned parents beat; it’s ingrained culturally in most cases. There is a feeling education is a privilege. The same could be said of voting, having doctors available to look after our health, having governments test and sanction the use of certain medical products, having scientists legitimize the understanding of our world and our very being, having politicians or religious leaders espouse certain dogmas as ‘the truth’. I could go on, but that isn’t the point of this particular article. The point is, I – yes me – know what is best for me. You know what is best for you. Other people (whether a parent, scientist, priest, politician or anything else) are simply there with an opinion that will inspire you to your inner truth in the process of either accepting or rejecting part of what they say. The power of discerning what is or isn’t right for you is yours and yours alone; contrary to what we were told growing up. As this person was relating more of his story, something my mentor said to me a while back came to mind. She had likened much of my life so far as navigating icy waters, defensively maneuvering around icebergs and the like, and said I needed to get used to the calm warmer waters of just being. As life is a mirror, reflecting back to us our predominant state of being, as this young man talked about what was happening with his parents there was a clear reflection of defensive energy going on. And I think that is perhaps common to most of us - at least in the early stages of a journey to authenticity. You see, it’s a fallacy that there is only defence or offense, eat or be eaten, flight or fight. But when we have spent most of our lives either fighting against the status quo, or trying hard to fit within it, it is hard to simply accept your own position without a need for justification or validation. He had been a straight-A student, but as his journey into adulthood is getting underway, and his perspective on life is now broadening, he is questioning the validity of the notion that a good education is what he needs to set himself up in life. So we rebel, we defend. That is exactly what I did when I bowed out of the idea that I needed to be out earning an income. I had to do quite a bit of work to change the relationship I had with money, as I wrote in this article, and was I ever defensive. That was clearly reflected in my partner’s attitude at home. Then, as I refocused and accepted that I did not need to be out earning money, that slowly began to change. As I became at ease with the idea, so did my partner, and as my confidence grew, that too was reflected back in his confidence. I still have situations arise where I can get defensive, here is another I wrote about back in January when I was advocating to do what fuels you and dump the rest. While the need to be accepted is still strong, I am happy to say these situations arise much less frequently nowadays as the need for authenticity is stronger still and becoming more practiced. As I look back on my life I can see in the many changes I’ve made in direction, from the breakup of relationships, to the bowing out of competitive sport and a corporate career, I was initially defensive. Then, once I got good with the idea, once I was happier in myself, the world reflected that happiness back to me. The realization that your life choices are just that, your life choices, can take some getting used to. In fact, that is perhaps the root paradigm we get defensive about most, after a lifetime of being told others know better. Yet it is the one perspective that most universally resonates. From the standpoint that your choices are yours to make, and knowing you will deal with the consequences whether good or bad, you can start to have confidence in your decisions. As we feel into the power within each of us to discern our own truth, we can start to drop the defence and learn to simply be. If what you read here resonates and you’d like a fresh perspective on your own situation, feel free to contact me. There’s no charge or strings attached, I truly enjoy helping where I can, click here for further information. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog
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Change Your Life, Change the World
When I awoke the other morning, still half in a dream state, I had a really cool moment where I was observing what it felt like to dream versus to actually think. The dreamy state was a lot lighter, as if images were floating somewhere up above my brain. The thought state was a lot more effort, and I could feel the sensation of the areas behind my left and right temples cranking up ready for another day of mental activity. Once underway, we often don’t realise the sheer effort on our part to keep up all that activity, nor the benefits of taking time out from it. I remember my daughter’s kindergarten teacher commenting a couple of years ago on how important it was for our kids to have regular times in the day where they could just have downtime to unpack new experiences, things as simple as processing the new crayons they had used, or a new story they had heard. I watched my 7-year-old last weekend as we spent time away with friends, she was in her element playing with the gang but she was not taking any downtime; something I also let slip because of the social nature of the trip. By day two, her lack of tolerance was obvious, she was snappy with her sister and her ears were closed to any requests or questions. By the time we set off for home she was pretty frazzled and had a total melt down over something she’d normally take in her stride. It’s often easy for adults to look at kids in that state and label them simply as ‘tired’, implying more sleep is needed. While sleep is beneficial for bursting the bubble of any negative momentum going on and resetting our energy levels, it’s not the only thing we need. We need regular, conscious, time to unwind mentally. Later that same day, once home, I was reading a story before bedtime for the kids and my daughter was really obviously not following the storyline as she does usually; she kept switching into a dream state, which I commented on to help her realise the effects of the over-stimulation. “But I like daydreaming mum” she said and I thought there was a lesson in that for all of us. While her body was trying to regain its balance through a meltdown, closed ears and day dreams, as we grow we tend to get on with things and ‘push through’. This usually results in headaches, regular colds, coughs, flu, earaches and so on as we ignore what our body is trying to tell us. Then, as we move through life, we can manifest far more serious illnesses as our body keeps trying to bring us back to balance. Unlike children, we generally have less new experiences that we have to process in our daily lives, instead we tend to expend most of our mental activity regurgitating the past in some way or worrying about the future. We put a lot of effort into thinking about things that are not just unnecessary, but entirely unhelpful to our quality of life. I thought about the many hours I have spent in meetings, and how disengaged most of the attendees were most of the time. Personally speaking, I know that if I had just used that time to actually daydream about the kind of life I wanted to lead and the kind of world I wanted to live in, I could have saved myself a lot of angst. Instead I’d often be stewing on things I had seen or heard that I didn’t like, or trying to figure out how on earth to get to better end solutions, or wishing I could use the time more productively on the list of 500 other things that needed to get done that day, or sometimes I was just simply sitting in despair at the time in my life that was wasting away having to endure those largely useless gatherings. Rarely was I ‘in the game’. And having attended and hosted many of those useless gatherings over many years in many different settings and companies, I know how rare it was for any of my colleagues to really be in the game either. The one exception was usually ‘away days’ or ‘offsites’, where we kicked into a more open and creative gear. My partner, on the other hand, has never worked in an office environment; instead he works with his hands. He has the radio on for company a lot of the time, and commented recently about becoming aware of when his mind was wandering while he was working. He found himself ruminating on a dynamic with someone in his life that really bugs him, yet he can’t change it except in his own attitude. Acutely aware of that, he was also wondering why he was letting it take up so much space in his brain, instead of dwelling on the many nicer aspects of his life. There are so many scenarios that each of us replay in our heads each day, sometimes the characters in our stories change, but often not until we have well and truly chewed them up and spat them out of our daily activity over long periods of time. We tell ourselves we are well rid of that character, then another takes their place in a similar story – unless we wake up to these thought patterns. This human condition of useless and unhelpful mental activity seems endemic. It’s perpetuated by ‘being busy’. Taking regular time throughout the day to just contemplate, drift and daydream feels impossible and unproductive to many, yet it’s the opposite. I bumped into another school mum the other day as I was leaving the beach, where I like to go for regular walks, to go and pick up the kids. She was just getting in her car and had clearly been for a swim in the ocean. She looked at me guiltily and started explaining why she was at the beach, and how she had made it productive because she had groceries to do. I smiled and shrugged “I just like the beach” I said “I come here most days”. But I get where she is coming from, our defensive standpoint around productivity is a result of our environment. We haven’t been taught to value ourselves enough to take time out of our regular physical and mental activity and actually be present in the moment long enough to see the world through fresh eyes. When you do that regularly enough, you can more clearly see your own self defeating thought patterns and how they have and are showing up in your life. For me, it hasn’t meant I am completely rid of these old habits, but I am more aware of them and many have lost momentum as I have switched focus. I now also see the value in questioning everything that is ‘common opinion’ or ‘the way we do things’. With my head out of the sand of my own little life more often, I have started to think through many of the issues we face as a society. I look at our way of living and question all aspects with an interest now that I never had time to indulge in before (because I was so caught up in useless and self-defeating thoughts). I look at our ‘systems’ of living and wonder at how we ever came to give away so much of our own power on such a mass scale, certainly over the last 5 millennia; the power to think, to be well, to learn, to build a home, to barter and to govern our own lives. We are at a place of crazy when it’s normal to think in terms of another ‘owning’ land or anything from the natural world, or to think it’s normal to pump ourselves and our environment with chemicals when we are at dis-ease, or to think that we arrive into this world in complete ignorance of all that has gone before, or to think we are each only our own body and disconnected from everything else. Rather than let your mental activity take on a life of its own, as most do, become aware of what is going on in there in the moment and try to start directing your thoughts towards something that makes you feel better than worse. It helps hugely if you can mediate regularly, as it makes the practice of becoming aware of your thoughts in any given moment very easy. Taking a regular break from your mental activity will not only release you from the insanity of your own life and give you a fresh perspective, gradually leading to more quality of life and more moments of happy, it will help us all to evolve this world and realise our best potential. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Watching my kids have a horsey race using their noodles at their swimming lessons, I heard my eldest tell the instructor that her sibling hated to lose. She then compromised her own race so that her sister wouldn’t be upset. In fact her sister, more than anything, is quite suggestible and so quite happily then got upset (playing up to her role) when she did finally lose.
On the way home I started talking to them about the purpose of the race. “To win” they said. So I went a bit deeper and challenged them. “Mm, so win or lose, what do you get out of racing?” Between them they came up with fun and better swimming. Both true. The other word I’d put in there is confidence, with a caveat. The purpose of the race is motivational, to get them out there having fun and building their confidence and skills. However, if winning is seen as the purpose, only one person gets the confidence boost and where’s the sense in that? I started to reflect on this a bit more, drawing on my own experience as a competitive swimmer. When I was about 11 years old I beat my personal best time for 100m freestyle; 1 minute and 7 seconds. I have no idea if I won that race, I can’t remember that part. What I do remember is that, despite all the years training afterwards, I never beat that time. There were other races I won, but none of it meant anything. Freestyle wasn’t ‘my stroke’ so I told myself it didn’t matter, yet it obviously irked me since I still remember the details 30 years on. I really wanted to be able to swim it in under a minute, which is what would have made me feel like I’d been successful. Winning over others, on the other hand, is just contextual; there will always be others out there who can beat you and there will always be others you can beat. Sure losing can feel bad if you wanted to win, but perhaps we need to think beyond that to the actual goals of participating in the first place. I know that I want swimming to be fun for my kids, and for them to become capable enough to be safe in water. Personally I don’t really care whether they make a sport of it. Well, that is not true, I care that they only make a sport of it if it’s a passion they want to pursue for the joy of being the best they can be at it. There are so many things in life to pursue, the choices are endless. We came to experience life here to its fullest, and that means winning and losing in life. Right now my focus in life is to feel as good as I can as much as I can, to enable me to be fully present in each moment, listening to my inner inspiration. That is no mean feat and is likely to be a lifelong goal. With any luck I can at least improve the proportion of my day I spend in that state versus the one most of us live in. That state is the one where we live in our head, ruminating on the past, whether it has just happened or happened 15 years ago, and worrying about our future, whether in 10 minutes or 10 years. Most of us are rarely present in our own lives in this moment, which of course is where all life happens, So each day I take small wins as I manage to become aware of my mental state and let whatever thought had been in there drift away as I focus on my cat purring away beside me, or one of the kids drawing a picture, or playing a game, or the weather outside and the garden. I also love to dwell on and relish the inspired thoughts too though, like the words that come as I write these articles. And each day there are what I might consider many losses, cumulative hours of wasted thoughts. But there are many other things in life we could view as ‘losing’. We have each lost jobs, people, relationships and many other things beside all with varying degrees of emotional intensity. Yet of all the changes in my life that felt really bad at the time, if I look back they are all just the ebb and flow of life that ultimately led to growth that I underwent. Everything always seems to work out in the end, circumstances change, people change, and out of that comes growth and confidence. Even in this latest turn of events with mum sadly dying, while I will always carry mum in my heart, no doubt there is some change seeded in me as a result and I will grow in ways I can’t foresee right now. So perhaps we need to consider the messages we give out when we seek to use winning or losing to motivate someone, especially ourselves and our children. For really, if you choose to look upon any loss as a stepping stone to a better version of who you are in the world, then you are always winning. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. I woke up, smiling as I remembered the warm embrace of my dream. I used to call these my ‘higher self’ dreams, when I had this sense of just being able to let go, to lean back against the strength and love that was always quietly there for me. Now they are a daily occurrence, my awareness of flitting among the fairies of the universe in my nightly wanderings is more acute.
Yet here I am, still here on Earth, a beautiful planet. The sun has come up, or more accurately we have rotated back around to greet it again. When I moved to New Zealand I can recall the strong desire to see more blue skies. Yet even on the grey cloudy days I am more aware of the sun in all its glory just behind them. What beauty the sun reveals, even when it is shaded. Colours are one of its more wonderful gifts, and the life of course it breathes into all that is green, not to mention that radiant energy of our most bright star, an energy I have begun to appreciate so much more since I began to reawaken to the wider context of my life. The cat has stirred, ever alert to my awakening presence, her soft purring a gentle start to the day, her fur silky on my hand as she revels in a few strokes. Then “Mum” I hear, the children of my heart are awakening to the day. I go to them, we greet the day as we always have, a little tune for each. Their smiles are worth a shower of diamonds. Then Archie, now awake too, greets us all with his usual mischievous bluster and goes off to make my morning smoothie. Fresh leaves plucked from the garden, mingled with berries and yogurt, plant life intertwining with mine. Understanding the essence of what we eat has been a great gift. As death leaves a body as a decaying shell, it is the same with plants. I appreciate the essence of what is given when plucked from their life source and eaten straight away. We all head to the kitchen, the kids helping themselves to breakfast, then we sit and eat, sharing funny stories and thoughts about the day. I love those moments, the kids are just full of gems and I can see Archie taking it all in too. After everyone puts their things away, Archie gets ready for his day and the girls drift off to their creative endeavors. I head off to do my meditation. Sometimes one or both of the girls join me, sometimes not. But I smile at the sky as I appreciate the powerful forces that are focused upon me. Life is pretty cool. Every day I feel grateful for the inspiration that pointed me in the direction of New Zealand and the place I call home, it’s quite a contrast to the place I knew as a child. Though I still love the West of Scotland humour and relish visiting the places of yesteryear and the fond memories I have. As I meditate I can hear the cicadas singing, their constant backdrop a familiar sound throughout the warmer weather. It’s a soothing sound, like multitudes of small birds all calling to each other in morning song, with only a lull now and then. It helps bring me to the present moment as I breathe in and out, only the occasional thought popping into my head and drifting past like a cloud as I focus again on the sound of the cicadas. After my meditation, I just take a moment to look up to the sky; upwards and outwards taking in the vastness. Some days I am greeted with a colbalt blue sky, others it is dark and cloudy, with everything in between. Regardless, the enormity of it all gives me perspective and keeps me in deep appreciation. The green of the skyline as my eyes come back to the earth signifies flourishing of life here on this planet, we are very fortunate. So I step into the garden, rain, hail or shine. I love to wander through this oasis we have planted. I look at trees that are now flourishing into growth and remember the saplings we brought here. I thrill at the berries I can pick and eat as I wander, and thank the universe for such gifts as these. Thinking of the intelligence and love in these plants, is another sheer miracle of the world we live in. Both Callie and Jenna are often in the garden. For them it is both a playground and a natural wonderland with so much to teach. Watching children at their play is special, especially when it is play that exercises their imagination and connectedness to the natural world. This time at home is so grounding and they are thriving. I have help of course, for in my journey on this earth I became limited in my thinking early on and have awareness of wanting to expand my way of being and that of my children, so it is good for them to be around others who can help them to connect with their own inner guidance. Ahead I seek my little nook. It’s the place I can retreat to, exclusively mine. Others come in of course, when they are invited, but it is the one place that I can go for solitude. It has a beautiful view, I can see the lush green of our land and its plants and trees and beyond the beautiful landscape. I can see the children playing at times and I can hear them or the wildlife around me. I go to my nook to write, to think, to contemplate, to rest, to meditate, to stretch out in my yoga poses or just to be simply with myself and the whole of the universe. In this home of ours, we each have our own little haven, and it’s bliss. There’s also a small place for guests to have their own space too, used most often by one or other of our parents. The kids love having their grandparents come to visit, and they in turn love seeing the kids, but all the more for having a retreat. Archie thrives in this place too. While he loves the process of transforming other people’s homes, he loves nothing more than his own home and working upon it, or riding through the bush around the property. We often talk for hours about our ideas for making the place feel even more special. Life is good and we often dream together as a family. These days there are less material things Archie or I want, but the kids are unlimited in their thinking, which is a joyous thing for a parent to know. These kids have come to change the world, as did we, but the ground upon which they walk is a much more enlightened one. I look forward to the future that is unfolding and enjoy the present we are living, it’s very gratifying to know we have such control over our experience of life. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. In pursuit of happiness, I’ve almost always been afraid of change, yet been more afraid of standing still; something inside driving me forwards. Moving to another country, then to the other side of the world, leaving relationships, leaving jobs, leaving the corporate realm altogether, having a family, reconciling family relationships, the list goes on. There are no regrets in any of that but when everything else has been stripped away, there comes a point you have to look in the mirror. I could continue to chew my way through excuses and point to certain people and circumstances as my source of dissatisfaction, but I have too much awareness to do that anymore. While it is true that I am happier than I’ve ever been, I think it’s fair to say I still wouldn’t describe my underlying state as happy. It’s not that I expect butterflies and rainbows 24/7 but, in this journey to me, my awareness of what I think and feel is now so acute that the gap (between indoctrinated-by-the-world-me and unadulterated me) is more painful and more obvious than it was before I got rid of all the distractions. My underlying state is too often at dis-ease with ‘what is’. It’s this melancholy that blocks me on so many levels, but certainly from an overall state of happiness. For anyone undertaking a spiritual journey, this will seem really obvious, yet our internal thought patterns do not generally disappear in a moment of grace never to return. Unless we suffer some catastrophic event, most of us have some hard yards to do. That has never been so obvious to me as it is now. Yesterday I had a migraine, fairly mild with visual disturbance and a vice-like feeling around my head. It was a school-day so the temptation to take the kids to school while I had a rest was strong, but neither of them were on top form either. So instead I decided to bite the bullet and we all stayed home. I spent most of the day in a state of observation, since I lacked the energy for much of anything else. There were many moments in the day I wished for the peace and solitude I’d normally have on a school day, but there were also some beautiful moments watching the kids embroiled in their creative endeavours. Later in the day when my partner arrived home early, we all took a short walk in a nearby wooded area and the kids had fun in the mud at the stream while we took in the sounds of nature all around and enjoyed some sunshine. We had a nice time, something more to appreciate. So today, once I had dropped the kids off at school, I sat and thought “okay Shona, here is the peace you were wanting, the peace that you bemoaned yesterday. Now what?” And I realised just how bad I still felt. Now I can point to lots of things that might explain that away, and anyone who knows me would likely be kind enough to help, especially since my mum passed away recently. However, the only person who is inside my head is me. And I have full awareness of the garbage going on in there. That spew train has years and years of momentum. Delving into anything on board the spew train will only give it more energy. I’ve done it to death, enough of it is documented in my articles to give you the gist (see What Are Negative Thought Patterns Doing for Us as a recent example). It’s probably not that different to your own spew train. I recognise it for what it is, just old patterns, old imagery that is chugging along on new fuel. Yet there will never be a shortage of fuel because we are wired for growth, and experiencing dissatisfaction is part of our propulsion system. But if I only use that energy to fuel the old thought patterns the dissatisfaction just worsens. So what to do about it, this default habit that most of us find ourselves in? How do I use the fuel to get a different, more healthy, train out of the station? Appreciation feels much better than dissatisfaction. But I have no mental template for that, the switch to living in a state of appreciation rather than a state of dissatisfaction. That train isn’t anywhere near built yet. There have been fleeting trips upon such a train in my life, so I know what it feels like. You too can likely recall memories of riding high in a new relationship, or a new job, or the attainment of some goal you’d been focusing on. But how do we make that our way of being rather than it feel like a fleeting ride at some Disneyland Park? How do we create an appreciation train and get it out the station? I suspect there are as many answers as there are people asking the question. I know that what calls me is words. While limited, words are our most focused way of thinking, and thinking is the tool of our creation. So I have started to write out my future as if it was today, I am writing in a way that depicts not just my circumstances as I want them to be, but also my thoughts as I want them to be. I am writing my future and rewiring my brain, so it can help rather than hinder. It’s said it takes 21 days to form a habit, but I suspect I will have to go on rewriting and rewiring my thought patterns by focusing daily on my life through these appreciation lenses. I have already noticed thoughts in my head making excuses about why I can’t write about that today. But you know, I suspect once I get some momentum going on the appreciation train it won’t seem that hard at all, and I will have changed my underlying state to one that makes me feel happier a lot more of the time. And who doesn’t want that? I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. To be fair I’m not just talking about porn here, but it probably grabbed your attention and what is written may make you think about the topic a bit differently; or not.
In response to From Desires of the Flesh to Deep Connection a reader felt that it was perhaps necessary to acknowledge that the desire for porn was real in order to transcend it, and asked for my thoughts. The word ‘real’ in there invoked a memory of sitting, (bizarrely) in a corporate management pow wow, listening to a young woman recite to us a poem she had written. The poem had conjured up images and feelings about the human body that felt more real to me than anything in the porn genre. She had written a poem about her post partum body, and all its glorious details and changes as they had related to each of the memories of the miracles that had occurred. The images she wove were those of the body being honoured as a map of that singular best example we have of co-creation on the planet today. You can imagine this gaggle of senior managers from a well known corporate brand all assembling for their usual run down on the month just gone, steeling in anticipation of the budgetary presentation and the like, cringing at the thought of what some well-meaning person may have dreamt up as a ‘fun’ part of the meeting this time. And here comes forward this young woman, laying it all bare in words, being real. Her voice had a nervous edge, and we all wondered what was about to be said. Although nervous, she projected strongly as she sank into her subject and recited to us verse after verse honouring her stretch marks as though each were a tender babe in itself to be held to the bosom. The whole audience was gripped and moved, if I knew who she was or where you could hear her poem I’d share it in a heartbeat. I remember no context for that particular diversion that day, I suspect someone had just heard it and thought it bold, brave and moving, so decided to include it for its inspirational qualities. And it was inspirational. I contrast that with something else I heard said once about a wife’s postpartum body “looks like a pound of mince mate, lucky if I can touch the sides”. Which do we want our sons and daughters to hear? As someone who has birthed two children into the world, I would not trade my body for the one I had at 19. I love the story my body has to tell about my journey, and to deny that is to deny who I am. To compete with an image of some nubile chick who is pretending to be in ecstasy in return for money would be insanity. If I’m being asked, then my observation is that porn is clever as it’s designed to appear as a simple tool of instant gratification, but its images speak to something deeper. It seems to play to the male ego and cuts off communication to the soul, invoking feelings of domination and submission and perpetuating the images of a dying patriarchal society. But bigger issues aside, on an individual level the question is whether that instant gratification leaves a feeling of love and fulfillment in your heart, or whether it leaves only loneliness or some other feelings of lacking? This is where each one of us has our own truth. If it takes you closer to happiness, then in your book it’s good, if it doesn’t then perhaps rethink. The fact that it proliferates in our time seems to me an indication not of its popularity, but of the desperation (not of the consumers) of those who wish to perpetuate the patriarchy that did not work and cannot lead us to a more enlightened and loving future. We think in images, and those we conjure up from within – especially those attached to strong positive emotions – are the most powerful tools of creation that exist. But we have become a world of lazy thinkers. Video makes it ever-easier to embed images in our minds rather than create those of our own imagination. Instead of focusing on the images presented to you externally, what if you took the time to focus on and create images of the best reality you could imagine for yourself? A friend of mine related her experience of intimacy once her partner had stopped viewing porn, she described him as more present, more attentive, and even more loving. Indeed to have your partner honour your body in the way the young woman’s poem did would be amazing, but that begins with each of us honouring ourselves. It does make me think about the images we hold in our common psyche of beauty generally. I tell my kids “beauty shines from within” but I have to really challenge myself on that to ensure I’m living in a way that reinforces that message. It’s not just about porn though, you could apply any of these principles to make up, food, cigarettes, drugs, clothes, or the multitude of things that are designed to make you look or feel better; do they? Do they make you feel better about your true authentic self? Do you even know your true self never mind loving who you are? Recently my partner exclaimed “wouldn’t it be great if you could just trade your body in for a younger version?” I paused and said “No. Think about the miracle our body is, grown from practically nothing visible to the eye. It weathers a lot, and it tells us quite pointedly that we need to change our attitude when we are not listening to our inner voice.” Now, don’t get the wisdom that flows through me mixed up with the Shona Keachie my partner actually lives with. I knew that I spoke that message because I needed to hear it. Needless to say that happened only a day or so before my kidney stone lesson, talk about needing to clear blockages! Coming back to the original question that was posed, do we need to acknowledge our desires in order to transcend them? Absolutely. Bringing awareness to the thoughts and emotions that reside within us is crucial. Understanding where those thoughts and images are seeded from is also extremely helpful. Volumes of images that are viewed externally, especially if they invoke emotions, will sadly seed quite well when there are no internal images in their place. So who is truly creating your reality? Is it you, or is it others/hype whom you have allowed to creep into your consciousness and become ‘real’? Forget about whether porn or anything else is good or bad, we need to learn to take hold of our own thoughts again. If we can relearn to appreciate the person that we are, the body we each have, and the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can start to feel good again about ourselves and others. Now wouldn’t that be something? I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. “What the…?” my eyes flew wide open, the pain having just seared through my side. “This doesn’t seem right” was my next thought, as I dialed the national health helpline, who – after a few pointed questions - dispatched an ambulance. 8 hours and several episodes of birthing-like pain and tests later, the diagnosis, a kidney stone.
Now I could dwell on the physical level of what causes of kidney stones but, if you want to avoid them, drink lots of water to flush out any fragments before they get a chance to form. No, I was more interested in the real cause; what I was thinking, feeling etc to cause something that really got my attention. I’m pretty healthy as a rule but, if I’m honest, I knew I’d been in a bit of a funk lately. With almost two months of looking after the kids, meaning little ‘me’ time (it’s our summer holidays here), mum dying and a mammoth trip to the other side of the world with us all in tow, I had gotten caught up in some rather unhelpful thought patterns. Thankfully I’ve been in the habit of taking 15 minutes each day to meditate for a couple of years now, so, despite the chaos around me, I was at least aware of the nonsense that filled my head. I just didn’t think it was as serious as all that to indulge in it for a while. I’m not talking about anything much different to what is probably planted in most people’s heads. For example, I was brought up in an environment where it was important that I tidied up after myself. So, as a mother of two little ones, and a partner who does not object to a bit of mothering himself, I often find myself tidying up after everyone and resenting the heck out it. On the face of it, you would think this fairly harmless. But think about it logically. I start resenting the kids for doing their tidying, where does that take me, they are young kids after all? That road can too easily lead to anger or apathy, depending on what I decide to do about it. Neither healthy. As for my partner, well, when you get on the vibe of resenting your nearest and dearest, that can quickly spiral into a whole load of other thoughts on the same wavelength – whether the thoughts even relate specifically to that relationship is irrelevant. In fact, when you get on that wavelength, bang, practically everything you ever thought or felt in relation to resentment in a relationship gets served up in one sonic energy boom into your consciousness. The next thing you know, “that is it, the relationship is over, it’s a matter of principle, being treated like that!!”reverberates through you. Thankfully I didn’t go there, I just birthed a kidney stone instead. A painful reminder that what I am thinking and feeling is entirely at my will. I can be right or I can be well. Talking to a friend of mine recently, she was recounting some pretty upsetting interactions with her very much grown up daughter that had taken place over the holidays. Her daughter doesn’t like being yelled at, it has its roots in her childhood as it does for all of us. So, long story short, someone yelled and ba-boom, out spews this tirade that had very little to do with the actual conversation at hand. What followed was a dramatic exit and weeks of awkward interactions that left everyone bruised and never really got resolved. Old thought patterns are very seductive; their old familiar feeling makes them nestle right back on in there, in their spurious self-righteous indignation. Let’s take apart this example, shine some common sense onto it. Being tidy, is it worth losing the people I love over? More importantly, is it worth losing my self-love? All those hours of feeling bad, harbouring those unhelpful thoughts? I’m not saying let’s all go to hell in a handcart and live in some stinking mess of our own creation. Oh, did you hear that? That is exactly what we could consider we are doing as a human race on the much bigger planetary level. That is probably what I am feeling more, truth be told. This man-made world of ours that I seek to keep so tidy, throwing away mountains of rubbish each year, giving away mountains of consumable toys, having to continually upkeep houses that last only decades, cars that last much less, all of which is such a gross waste of energy. Instead of loving and appreciating the planet we live in, living with it and all of the natural resources it provides us symbiotically, we rip into it, like a child ripping into a Michelangelo masterpiece to use it in a creation of its own. “Look at us, we are so clever” we think, “so technologically advanced”. Yes I do like to be tidy, “tidy house, tidy mind”. But was I really created to tidy my environment constantly? Or is that just a result of the man-made society we have constructed? Big questions over being tidy. And so they should be, we have to start thinking beyond our powerfully embedded self-absorbing, self-defeating thought patterns. Sure, I could beat the drum of being tidy so loudly that my partner and kids submit and take on their own self-absorbed energy about the whole issue. Or I could go and find someone really tidy to sate the little tidiness ego inside. Or I can see all of this for the distraction it is. I was not created to tidy, I am absolutely sure when I worked out a blueprint for this life on the planet, I did not specify tidying up after everyone as my purpose, or any part of the deal. It’s more likely I specified feeling the flow of the eternal wellbeing and love that exists as important. So when I get these fairly trite examples in my life, and they get louder and louder until they manifest in the absolute agony of a kidney stone, I get the clarity I need to knock me out of that funk. Back up the truck a bit, with the school year in sight I had started to turn my thoughts back to what I wanted to focus on this year. I had actually recognized that I needed to let the love in. I read a book recently where an older man was talking about the animals of our planet (even ‘dangerous’ ones) generally nurturing, rather than harming, children in need. He cited a child’s most dominant state of love as the reason. Yet we adults live more in a dominant state of fear and aggression, and so we elicit the same from our surroundings. This really made sense to me, and resonated deeply. So what to do about the little ‘tidy’ drum beating? Or the ‘being shouted at’ drum, or whatever montage of drums we each have going on distracting us from the most important message of all – to love ourselves? We have to start beating the drum of love, it is that simple. When I think back to my thoughts leading up to the kidney stone, it seems quite pertinent that I had just had a conversation with my mentor who said “just take it on then, let love be your predominant state”. And so in my quiet moments, the ones where I was going to dive into doing something (like tidying up…) I began stepping aside for 5 minutes of relaxation instead, I had a conversation in my head that said “come on in love, take a look around, feel free to have a clean out, let’s get rid of anything unhelpful”. So what do I take from that? Well, for a start, I’d probably recommend adding on something like “gently” to that intent if it resonates! However, thanks to that kidney stone, despite its pain, the contrasting outcome is a sharp clarity. And I should add that the love came, in the form of some amazing friends and family, and most importantly, the peace within. So I urge you to keep even what you’d consider benign thoughts on your watch list. As you become aware of them, reach for the love instead. That doesn’t mean you let everyone walk all over you, just that you start to look at the world through a different pair of lenses that can only see the most loving action for you to take. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. “Take some leisure time” she suggested. “Leisure?” I thought, that stopped me in my tracks.
Here I am on this journey to me and, while I’m a few deliberate years into the journey, I got rather distracted this last year with mum’s rapid decline and recent death. Now there is this moment of readjustment, trying to remember “where was I up to?” Except I’m not starting where I left off, that is an illusion. Life continued, my journey continued, I just stopped tracking it quite so much. Mum is basking in the fullness of her energy now, consciousness reconnected with our source, in the light, however you want to put it. Yet here I am. In truth, I think part of me went too, and felt its warmth. That part of me isn’t quite so sure how to renter into the world. As my mentor reminded me, I came from that source almost half a century ago into a world, a family, for whom war was familiar. It’s probably no coincidence I listened to two audio fictional books on the plane recently, stories about the atrocities and struggles of the Second World War. Those were real in my life as a child, with parents born just as the war ended; yet rations, fear and struggle continued for some time. I recall vividly the fear I felt when Britain went to war in the early 1980’s over the Falklands. At the time I was deeply in love and the threat of conscription suddenly loomed over the relationship. While that threat was never realised, the memory demonstrates to me just how real the threats all seemed. Then came the other wars, the war against AIDS, the war against drugs and the war terror, all perpetuating more fear. Our life is a mirror, it plays back to us where our energy is dialed in. And so I have known defense and fear all my life. This part of me that reconnected with our source, it knows no fear, and it has no desire to take on the energy of defense. But I have no mental template for that. In my recent article about doing what fuels you and dumping the rest, I cited an example of saying no to the onerous task of organizing the school’s annual fair. That was all very well, but the question was how to say no without defence, without inadvertently starting a war. It was an interesting exercise observing draft email after draft email. Each time the defences lessened. First came spewing forth the (literally) years of indignant thoughts on the topic merged with a defensive intonation and a mix of suggestions for improvement. Finally came the version where I just sent my apologies, explaining that, with mum’s recent death, I just haven’t got the energy for something I don’t like. It was like a scene from Nashville watching singer Juliette Barnes get all angry with her fans for judging her then, finally, taking a breath, feeling into the pain and just throwing up her hands and saying “you know what, I struggle with depression, I need to figure this out”. In fact that scene was just life mirroring to me where I am at: letting go of defence and done with navigating icy waters. My mentor is right, it’s time to let in the warmth and the light. But how do I carry that into this world? And so, stopped in my tracks, all this passed through my mind as I contemplated the word leisure. She is right of course. Taking on a more leisurely attitude will reflect back a different world than the one I’ve been experiencing until now. But what is leisure? I guess for some it’s walks in the forest, playing tennis or being more social. Not for me, and there are only so many times I want to walk on the beach no matter how I love it. Another ah ha moment waited in the wings as my mentor asked me what kind of mother I'd like to be for my children. Funnily enough it was the same question Juliette Barnes got asked in her scene too. It was like the universe was playing back to me the important parts of the conversation I’d had. The kind of mother I’d like to be is one who is in harmony with her environment, who fully understands the natural world and the part it has to play in aiding human growth and life. To understand human potential and how to leverage the amazing capacities we all have that most believe belong only in sci-fi movies. I’d like to be the kind of mother that can say to the creator “I know you made us in your image, I know your design was flawless, I see the perfection. I can do this, you got it right, I have got this.” That is what leisure is to me, where glee and awe and inspiration lie, to discover the secrets that unlock all of that. So as Juliette Barnes was advised to take a deep breath every time she felt anger and, instead, feel the pain behind it, the advice given to me was to take 5 minutes to myself to contemplate, to relax, every time I felt compelled to some sort of action – or at least 5 times a day. And so as I wonder whether leisure is indeed the antidote to the life of defence I’ve known until now, I am left in no doubt that pursuing all that interests me will help me find the way into calmer, warmer waters that are filled with light. As you contemplate what leisure might mean for you, consider a world in which you could feel a more leisurely attitude about everything you get drawn to, where others feel the same. It just feels different doesn’t it? Much nicer, certainly the kind of world I want my children to experience and for us all to enjoy. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. As my brother and I were talking about what motivates people, he said “it’s simple right, some people get their energy from doing things that would make others feel drained.” Right. It’s one of the basics of the way we are each wired.
In theory, as we all derive our energy from different things, you’d think there would be no opportunity for us to get bored or resentful or depressed in the world by things that we do, instead there are endless opportunities to fill our cups. So why are so many of us doing things that deplete rather than refuel our energy? As I’ve cited many times before, the number one regret of the dying is all the time they wasted in life trying to please others. With my mum’s death recently it’s reaffirmed my commitment to spend time doing the things that matter to me, and trust that any gaps I leave will be ably filled by others who love what I hate. When I left the corporate world a few years ago, I remember vowing to myself that I was done dancing to the beat of another’s drum. No more mind-numbing meetings, having to cross and uncross my legs, or waggle my foot around just to stay awake. No more politically correct conversations or being nice to people who were just downright nasty. That was the idea. Like many of you, there are things that I do that are not high on my list. I try and be mindful though about not making compromises and making myself miserable when I have a choice. For example, for those of you who have read my musings over the years, you’ll know a perennial issue for me is our annual School Fair. When we joined the school, I eyed the sentence (on the commitment form we had to sign) about supporting fundraising activities with suspicion. When I queried it, I was told “oh it’s nothing to worry about. The only thing you really need to do is to help with the School Fair each year, each family has to do 4 hours on the stalls and bake cakes etc”. Mmm. Big understatement that was. The Fair, it turns out, is a big community event attracting thousands of visitors. It’s not just a few bake stalls. There are lots of good old fashioned fun activities like candle dipping, a coconut shy, a flying fox, a ‘stack-a-crate’ climbing challenge and other interesting games like the lemonade bike. Then there’s the centre stage entertainment, the crafts (it’s the parents who make all the crafts to sell and there are rather onerous specifications and quantities), the food stalls, the rubbish and zero-waste management, the car parking, on and on. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots to love about the school my kids attend. Most importantly, it’s packed with staff who really give a lot to the roles they are performing. The head teacher is passion personified when it comes to the children and the education they are providing. But I’m under no illusions; the Fair is a big project. I have enough experience of projects under my belt in the corporate realm to know the size of this job. For me, just the thought of it drains my cup so fast you’d think it was a sieve with 5cm holes in it. Equally, I know there are others who thrive doing this kind of thing. Now I have no real idea why the Fair has come to be run the way it has but, however it has come about, it’s become practice for Class 2 parents to organize the whole thing – and guess which class my daughter is in this year? It may be that the Fair was initially the brainchild of a dedicated group of parents, or at some point it all got too much for staff worn out by the myriad of other activities throughout the year. Regardless, at some point since the inception of the Fair, someone decided it would be a good idea to have Class 2 parents organize it all. So do I have to buy into this? The school has never been explicit about this onerous task, yet here it is. Should I ’suck it up’ because others have? Or should I expect to contribute because it’s a worthy cause? Whatever the reason, trying to push a boulder uphill is never a great idea. For my part, organizing the Fair is simply too much to ask; it’s too draining, taking too much mental, emotional and physical energy away from my focus on parenting especially, never mind the other hats I wear. What I do know is that I have no specific obligation to take part in this project, other than perhaps peer pressure created, in the main, from others’ perceptions that they have no choice. Yet the parents do have a choice, as does the school. It’s perhaps better to cast the net wider and, rather than expecting a set of 26 parents in one class to take on 25 different and sizeable project roles, allow those in the wider community - who might actually feel like they want to (and have the capacity to) take on these roles - to come forward. We are all motivated by different things, so you’d think there would be no shortage of willing volunteers for everything that takes place in our world. And there is, there are those that love this type of stuff, so why – as in so many walks of life – are people trying to decree how things happen and perpetuate it just because it’s become the norm? There was an article I wrote last year, called Win-Win-Win Giving, talking about how giving is something that should be about ease and joy, not sacrifice and duty. The win-win-win stuff, when you inspire or empower someone doing something you love, and get the warm fuzzies from having helped. At what point do we say ‘enough is enough’ if it’s how we feel? How many examples are there like this in your own life, where you are dancing to the beat of another’s drum? Where you are trying to be superman or superwoman, instead of realizing that less is more? Yes we may face peer pressure, and perhaps pressure from other quarters, but really, the most pressure we put on ourselves comes from within. Our own desire to look good, to fit in, to have others think well of us. Instead of being a martyr to something where we’d rather be poking our eyes out with a pin, we need to learn to step aside; there are others who would get a lot out of taking up the mantle. And if there isn’t, one would have to question the need for the task anyway. It’s not that I want to see our School Fair fail, I want to see it thrive. Rather than walk around with an all too visible “I survived the Fair” attitude for the rest of our children’s primary and intermediate school years, I know the best way forward is to let those who want to take up the reins and lead the way with energy and enthusiasm go for it. Sometimes the best thing we can do is simply to get out of their way. We have been born with unique desires, talents and traits that can serve this world in so many ways. Instead of trying to be a square peg in a round hole just because we think the world needs us to be, how about we each take that square peg and inspire the heck out of others by finding the best 4 corners to fit it in? I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Currently in Scotland, we visited an old textile mill. It’s not any old mill, it’s the World Heritage site at New Lanark, a short drive from where I was brought up, marked by the philosophy with which it was run by Robert Owen in the early 1800’s.
Owen was an interesting character whose ideas made for remarkably better living conditions for the workers than elsewhere else in the industrial world at the time. His philosophies on social communities were deemed strange by many at the time, and are still today aspirational. In his New Year’s address to the people of New Lanark in 1816 he said: “What ideas individuals may attach to the term “Millennium” I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness improved a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.” 202 years on, this is still true. We see ourselves as more advanced than we were back then, and yet health and money remain the top two areas of focus for individuals, and most of us are still in pursuit of happiness rather than embracing it as a state of being for the most part. He also said “If we cannot yet reconcile all opinions, let us endeavour to unite all hearts.” Wise words, but I think harmony begins within our own heart. With the recent death of my mum, whose body was ravaged by cancer, I was struck by the end of life phenomenon known as “terminal agitation and delirium”. This happens in the last hours and days of someone’s life. If you look at common cancer information websites, like Marie Curie, you will see they talk about the actual symptoms and guess at the causes, all of which are assumed to be emotional or physical. I was much more interested in the metaphysical reasons for this agitation as a person is letting go of the body and material world. After a bit of reading, looking for something that resonated, I came to the conclusion that the apparent suffering likely arises from the struggle to surrender that separate sense of self, from which emanates a feeling of utter isolation and loneliness, and fear of what will come of that surrender. Having gone through this process myself while in a healthy living state, I can appreciate that those who have been locked in their heads for a lifetime and whose sense of self is so completely identified with their bodies must find these final moments in this life pretty frightening. I know from my own journey and experiences that resisting the inevitable truth - that there is more to ‘you’ and the world around you, a greater intelligence certainly - only worsens fear or suffering. Loosening my grip on the need to fix everything, and trusting the inward feelings of peace I had found after peeling away all the emotional layers I attached to everything around me, led to a trust that things work out for the better when I get out my own way. Life is savage when we believe we have to suffer, for whatever reason, because we will; it’s inevitable. Instead of seeing money as it is, a man-made construct that means nothing except whatever value we place on it; or seeing heath as it is, an opportunity to learn from what our body is teaching us about our lifestyle and thought patterns; or seeing happiness for what it is, our natural state, we feel lacking and then suffer. Coming into harmony in your own heart with your soul, for want of a better word, is where your best life resides. This is where I’ve learned that there is no one truth, only our own truth. There is no one right way, only the way which is best for you in this moment. This means letting go of judgments, of yourself and of others, a thing my head does not like to cooperate with. Yet, as you practice being with yourself, sitting silently for a short period every day, awareness arises of your thoughts. And if you are aware of your thoughts, what is this awareness? It’s like two parts of you. Perhaps it’s a huge fountain of consciousness, some of it running into your body as a vessel but most remains part of the bigger whole. The state of terminal agitation seems to me to arise from the realization that the vessel is about to run dry, yet awareness remains, the fountain is still plentiful. In life, if we can see ourselves not as separate vessels but part of the one fountain, then we can start the process of living in harmony with ourselves, and from there this will lead to a world in which we can live in harmony. Suffice to say in the world today you can see whatever you want to see; from what would appear to be the prevalent more insular and selfish behaviours of many – which I like to think of as a crazy death dance of a desperate egoic state that knows its number’s up – to the more conscious behaviours of those who are aware of their connectedness to everything. So for all Robert Owen’s grand ideas on creating harmonious communities, I think it really is quite simple. If we endeavour to allow the harmony within us to surface, through our individual harmony we will naturally give rise to more harmonious living and communities. We can live in harmony. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. This year has been a heart wrenching, heart melting, mind-expanding sort of year. Above all I’ve become more and more aware of our capability as humans and equally aware of how little of it we understand and use it.
The year has ended with my mum’s passing, and some beautiful experiences that surround that. After her death (a welcome release after the months she’d spent debilitated, her body ravaged by cancer) I took some time to sense into her energy. I had a wonderful vision of a hand reaching down from the heavens to pick her up, with first one and then the other hand; the way one would with a small child about to be whirled around. No longer weighted down, light as a feather and as free as the wind, she took to racing across the land, running fast and free with thunderous exhilaration. Then she was a single drop of dew on a rose, then the thorn, then the flower itself, an insect, a blade of grass, the wind that whistled through and the life-giving rain that descended from the sky. All at once she took flight; she was everything and she everywhere. Like a kid in a candy store experiencing the jubilation of life. The feeling that accompanied all of this was exultation and absolute grace. Then a word arose, rejoicing. As wonderful as it was to feel, it led me to appreciate the gap between that and how it would have felt to be shackled to a body so sick. While hers was an extreme and devastating burden, I know how far from the feeling of rejoicing I often feel on an ordinary day to day basis, and how others around me often seem weighted down too. With mum’s passing we have made the trip back to the UK, and have been catapulted from the warm summer and longer days of the southern hemisphere to the cold and dark days of the northern hemisphere. From beach walks to bright lights, late shopping and an abundance of consumables, it’s quite a shift. There seems a lot to distract me here, and it feels pretty overwhelming. In that sense I feel a deep gratitude for the somewhat more low key life I lead back home, more nature and less consumerism. Yet there are the connections with friends and family to warm the heart and reflect back life in new and interesting ways. Being here with my family has made mum’s passing both more poignant and, at the same time, easier. When I experienced the freedom and jubilation in mum’s rejoicing of all that is, I decided that I want to be connected with that feeling more often. Everything in the vision was connected to the natural world around us, a world we often under appreciate, and so I think the key is to appreciate and revel in the simpler things within and around us. Many of our day to day worries don’t really mean much at all when push comes to shove. Most of us know things always work out in the end, yet we constantly worry about how we are going to get there, wherever ‘there’ is at that moment in time. It really isn’t worth it, the worry. Instead, reflect on the miracles we make happen. As much as I think we completely and almost universally underestimate our capabilities, there is one very obvious one we do recognise. The example I have in mind is the power of creation – the miracle of making and birthing new life. When you start to think about the complexities of that, just allow yourself the luxury of imagining what that might mean your true capabilities are. We take for granted this amazing power of creation, yet for the most part seem to miss that it would point to the possibility that we can indeed create anything the mind can conceive and the heart believe. I managed to create two beautiful lives, literally created two beings, yet for the longest time couldn’t fathom that the job I felt trapped in was a prison of my own making rather than an economic ‘necessity’. Suffice to say life has moved on enormously since then, and the journey is well documented, but still, am I truly rejoicing in who I am and what life has to offer? Far from it. Instead we become entangled in others’ opinions, and limit our lives and possibilities with beliefs that were passed along without too much thought, only fears. So my new year’s resolution this year is to uncover more of our human potential, master it, and rejoice in it. To be more of who I am, more of who I was created to be, and to revel in all that means. Rejoicing in who you are means beginning to understand who you are and loving every aspect of that and of life around you. As we head into the New Year, I hope more of us will seek to understand what we are capable of, and start to drop our attachment to those ‘others’ opinions and to rejoice in who you are. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. At a family gathering recently a late night conversation turned to the question about what happens when you die. The question wasn’t asked of me directly, but our small group started sharing views in the zealous way people do when alcohol has lowered their inhibitions.
I remained quiet, not really enjoying the conversation particularly. My partner listened for a while and then prodded me “I’m surprised you’re not joining in” he said, as everyone listened, “this is right up your alley”. He started to add his views about us being energy and said perhaps the others should read my articles. It was awkward and I said nothing. Here’s why. For a start, my core belief is that there is no one truth, I believe each person has their own truth, “each to their own” as the expression goes. Expounding my own beliefs is fine if someone is genuinely interested, genuinely searching for answers and seeking inspiration in the experiences I’ve had. But then, that is why I share my experiences in these blogs, for those who are interested. From the conversation that had already taken place, and from what I already knew of the family, it was obvious to me that he and I were probably the only ones there who believe we are all eternal consciousness, non-physical at our essence, having a physical experience as humans. It was also obvious to me that no one was really looking to hear about my experiences, they simply wanted to state their beliefs. The reason I hadn’t been enjoying the conversation was its limitation; the limitations it infers of us as humans. Our general lack of awareness as a society of the vast powers of our consciousness is something I view as a sad state of affairs. I don’t want to dwell on that, I don’t want to give any energy to it by pushing against it; I’d rather just continue to strive to live life to its fullest potential and share that with others who are interested. Besides, how on earth do I put into one or two sentences (which, in a setting like that, is all you get if you are lucky) the current answers I have to the questions I’ve been seeking answers to for more than half my life. What happens when we die? What is the meaning of life? What is life? What is our human potential? As I say, these are all questions I’ve actively explored for years, it’s an enormous field of study. It’s not just something I give thought to now and again. Sure, the science of consciousness has moved far beyond many of the current views of the world’s residents, and anyone who checked out the latest research and findings in the realms of neuroscience and epigenetics would have cause to reevaluate some of their beliefs. However, most just aren’t that interested. Why push a boulder uphill? And why try and persuade anyone to your point of view? Isn’t that the single cause of conflict on this planet? Isn’t that where religion fails? At the end of the day, we each have an opinion and only that. As I shared recently in Why the Big Questions are Important, when I was talking to someone about life, existence and human potential, he acknowledged the probability of ‘something more’ because of the astounding perfection found in nature, but felt it was fruitless to pursue it as nothing could be proven. My response to that is it can be proven, but only by yourself - through your own experience. And to have mind-expanding experiences, you generally have to be seeking them to be open to them. It doesn’t matter what our science can now tell us, you need to have the experiences to believe them. As part of the same gathering, in a more sober state, the topic of my daughter’s ear infection came up. We happened to be flying in next week and so it was asked whether she was on antibiotics to make sure she’d be okay. All the same emotions and thoughts came up for me then as they did when discussing what happens when you die. To most they are not related, to me everything is related. Here are the thoughts that went through my head. Our bodies are perfect, they are far superior to anything man has ever constructed or dreamed about. They are most certainly capable of (and intended to) heal themselves. We are at a point as a society where we know antibiotics (like most synthetic medicines) kill not just the germs that are harmful, but those that are helpful, we generally all now also believe they are over-prescribed and the germs they were intended for are becoming resistant – and this is just in a matter of a few decades of use. Yet, in fear, many turn to them at the slightest hint of an infection. Here is what I had done about my daughter’s ear infection. I first contemplated the emotional cause, for the body in its perfection uses illness to teach us what we need to learn in order to be healthy. It’s common for children to have earache because of the constant moralizing of adults – she had it at the end of the last school term too (though I don’t exempt myself from the choir that is preaching). Then I had my daughter’s ears physically checked, indeed flying with earache is not just undesirable, it would be a dumb risk for me to take with her hearing. We could see there was fluid in her Eustachian tube. The fluid needed to be drained as it creates pressure on the ear drum, which can be done by blowing your nose regularly and using a nasal spray with just saline or something else natural, along with steam inhalations. If the fluid becomes infected it can become painful, and the body might need some help. Antibiotics have been shown to be effective in only 1 in 9 cases of earache like this (though you can find evidence to support or refute this, but it sounded about right to me personally). I have a preference for energy medicines, homeopathy in particular, and chose Merc Dulc for the job. Within hours the pain (that had become debilitating for her, along with the fever and vomiting) subsided. The next day the pain was gone entirely, the day after her appetite was back, and now the regular nose spray/ blowing sessions are revealing there is no infection and little fluid. Her body, in its perfection, has healed itself. So, what did I say when asked if I’d given her antibiotics? Just that I didn’t think it was necessary or would have been effective. This was enough to kill the conversation in truth, because it lay at the opposite end of the spectrum from the questioner’s beliefs and they did not want to get into an argument. If the topic had come up again in more general terms, I would have just ignored it as I did the question about what happens when you die. Many of us feel awkward when faced with these questions, and we can feel awkward not answering, but it can get very awkward if you end up disagreeing or arguing about your opinions. What wasted energy, for they really are only opinions after all. So when faced with these awkward social situations I think the best thing to do is just to respond as I started here, with “each to their own”. On the other hand, when people are more open or accepting, even if they don’t share your beliefs, it can be inspirational and uplifting. What is by far the most inspirational tact to take, is to simply live your own truth, and let others awaken to their own potential as life leads them to it. I’ve found the best approach in social situations is to turn away from the awkward subjects and lean into the ones in which you have more common ground; it make the whole experience a lot better. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Last week my young daughter’s poignant observation that her life was far from free, set off a chain of thought that led me to the point of realizing we needed to do some good old fashioned (and somewhat cliché) dream building with our kids.
That then made me realise just how little time we assign to any conscious creation of the life we actually want. Instead, most of the time our thoughts are lost in everything we’re observing and experiencing and that just perpetuates more of the same. So, as I vowed, I started a conversation with the kids about our ideal life. It has only been a brief conversation so far, which in itself is ridiculous as the kids and I have spent enough time together to have had several really good goes at putting together a pretty good picture of the kind of life we would like. As you might imagine, the kids had no problem in coming up with ideas. What I found interesting was the tack they took in their line of thought. Everything they dreamt up appeared to be based on the premise that they would create a lifestyle purely from nature, and it would involve nothing we have commercially available. When I asked them why this was, they replied that they didn’t want to use money. They have none and they have seen the life of bondage it creates in adults. It was fascinating to realise that the kids and I seemed in tune about our ideal lifestyle, even although I have shared very little with them about the direction my own thoughts have taken of late, involving a great deal of contemplation about getting back to a more natural lifestyle. While we spent only a few minutes talking about our ideal life, it has set in motion further thoughts and comparisons with the life we lead now. I have no wish to make life harder than it is, and it can often feel hard just to think about bucking the ‘normal’ ways of living, never mind doing it. I don’t have any aspirations to Tom and Barbara in The Good Life (a 1970’s British Sitcom about a couple escaping commercialism to become self sufficient), I have more of a vision that the new normal will be a return to self sufficiency and sustainability. To create the kind of lifestyle that we would find ideal needs to feel easy though, and not like we would be pushing uphill, though admittedly alternatives lifestyles are certainly more on the agenda these days than they were in the 1970’s. For example, when I consider the schooling choice we have made for our kids, it has exposed us (perhaps more so than in a state school environment) to alternative lifestyles; mainly evident around food choices. Gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free and vegetarian are all common place dietary choices and, while it certainly poses a challenge to cater for any event that traditionally involves ‘treats’ for a number of kids, these types of food are certainly more widely available and easily obtainable than at any other time in my life. Despite that, food shopping, baking and cooking are not high on my agenda. Neither is gardening, although I do appreciate plucking lettuce leaves and other fresh things from our garden - courtesy of my partner’s endeavours - to eat only minutes later. For my own part, I find it simpler to avoid anything involving catering and am just grateful my daughters’ birthdays generally fall in strawberry season, since these are fairly universally regarded as yummy and meet most of the ‘free’ requirements. While I’m not a zealot, I am an advocate of natural living (including food) and feel that, quite simply, the closer something is to its natural state the better it is for us. Yet here we are plopped right in the middle of an age and society that has created a crazy world (see Escape the Insanity of Your Life) where, instead of it being easy to eat richly beneficial food that grows under our noses on the land where we live, it’s easier to eat food that we go online or get in our car to obtain, and may have been flown half way around the world, be genetically modified, highly refined and/or pumped full of enhancers or preservatives. In this regard, I think I need to take more of a lead from my kids, who were not in the least bit concerned about how we would make any of our ideal lifestyle happen. I was busy telling them we could just trust that whatever we came up with would no doubt unfold so long as we trusted and believed in it. Yet there I was, contemplating all the uphill struggles I could foresee. I know it’s not down to me to make everything happen, and I know things always work out, I have just been programmed the way most of us have. Despite all the work I’ve put in on raising my conscious awareness of the thoughts running through my head, and in starting to focus on the thoughts that are more beneficial, that old societal programming still has the ability to kick into overdrive at times. So much so that a whole week has gone past and the kids and I had only that one conversation about creating our ideal life. What happened to all my intentions of getting them to draw pictures of it? Like happens with all of us, life gets busy. I could give you the run down and you may even sympathise, though most likely you’d simply recognise the same craziness in your own life. That is okay, even if it takes me a month, or six, I know we will spend more time dreaming the lifestyle we want into existence. We’ve just made a start, and that will do for now. What about you and the life of your dreams? It’s almost holiday season; most of us get at least some time out. How about just taking a moment of that to dream a little? You never know what could happen, and it’s certain to at least take you in the direction of your best life. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Yeah right! Except… what is stopping us from making it that way?
“Life is free and life is fun” said the narrator calmly. “Life isn’t free!” my daughter exclaimed; our kids were listening to a bedtime meditation story. Straight away she cited some examples dear to her heart “we don’t have free (style) drawing at school, we have (designated) play groups and, if life was free, we wouldn’t have to go to bed at a ‘reasonable’ hour.” Of course she is right, from her vantage point, life isn’t free. “You can change that” I told her “you came to build a new world, not live in this one. You just have to be smart about it.” I started in on a brief explanation about focusing our thoughts, then just told her to put her attention on what she wants rather than what she doesn’t want. “Imagine what you want in great detail, as much as you can, and trust what your thoughts have set in motion.” The way she picked that statement out about freedom really stuck me, especially as I had just written an article only last week about the insanity of our lives. “It must be the current theme I’m currently exploring in the journey of life” I mused. It reminded me of another story I heard recently, about a priest in Egypt watching on as many hundreds of slaves were put to work on a building project. After a long contemplation he decreed the slaves should be set free and offered coins to do the same work. There was an incredulous response to this course of action, and so he explained that the slaves begrudged the work, and so were slow in their efforts, requiring constant goading. The slaves were also expensive to keep, they had to be fed and housed. And so, for less money, they freed the slaves who – of course – came back to the same jobs much more willingly for coins. “This” the priest said “is democracy”. The key in this story, and the one of our life, is the contemplation that took place on the priest’s part. Those with true power are those who know that power lies within – within the realms of your thoughts and imagination. We only need to grasp that thoughts really do create things, and we have our solution. Of course, we can keep going round the same old hamster wheel year after year, or we can take charge of our thoughts. Or at least start by just noticing what those thoughts are. As a friend of ours said to me today when I told him the story “yep, we get to choose what we think and how we feel”. This is absolutely true, yet most of us run on autopilot and let our feelings be dictated in response to whatever we are experiencing. So we harvest more of the same. If our thoughts and feelings are running on autopilot, who did the thinking that put the thoughts in there? This was the theme of the article Your Best Thinking = Your Best Decisions = Your Best Life. We all have the choice to be like the priest in the story, to observe and to make smart moves, or equally we can choose bondage, like the ‘freed’ slaves. So life can be free and it can be fun, is yours? Mine is probably like yours, I still let what is happening around me dictate what I am feeling too much of the time. Intellectually I get what I’m pointing to in these thoughts I share with you, but emotionally I get wrapped up in everything from the fights the kids have to the things that are happening on the other side of the world with the people I love. There’s nothing wrong with feeling the range of emotions I feel in response to those things, but they create more thoughts, and the thoughts spiral, and before I know it the whole direction of my day can go down the gurgler if I don’t catch what is happening. So I make it my business to catch these thoughts, to be aware of what I’m thinking and feeling, to simply take the steam out of them. I manage that more easily now than ever because, by regularly meditating (for 15 minutes each day), I have practiced and practiced noticing and letting go of thoughts that aren’t helping me. Now it’s about kick starting my fervent imagination, to create the kind of world I want to live in. In What a Wonderful World This Is, I talked about the great things we have to focus on in the here and now, those create a good backdrop from which we can start to paint the canvas of the future. My kids have an amazing imagination, I know when I talk to my daughter about using it to build a new world that she gets this stuff better than I do; she’s not nearly as buried under layers and years of dogmas and societal constructs and other nonsense that has filled our heads and cut us off from our hearts. Perhaps it is time to write a story of the future, the kind of future where life is free and life is fun for all of us all of the time? This is the story of my life, and your life, and our children’s lives, and their children’s lives. It starts here, today, right in this very moment, invest in a bit of dreaming and you’ll have planted a seed for a better future. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. As I was talking to someone last week about life, existence and human potential, he acknowledged the probability of ‘something more’ because of the astounding perfection found in nature, but felt it was fruitless to pursue it as nothing could be proven.
I reflected on this and realised that is not in fact true, it can be proven – but – only to oneself. There is little value in trying to prove or persuade anyone else to a belief in something that cannot be taught, only experienced. The more I pondered this, I asked myself why it’s important to ask the bigger questions about our existence. The answers are many, but can be summed up simply as the answers lead you to your best life. As discussed in previous articles, like “is religion stopping you from exploring your inner world?”, for many years I simply didn’t think too deeply about the meaning of life, although I did come to a vague point of appreciating that there was more that existed beyond my comprehension. Then, just prior to leaving the corporate world three years ago, I had a number of things fall into place that suddenly opened my eyes to a whole new world around me. Shortly afterwards, I managed to neatly manifest an exit from corporate life with a steely determination to uncover more of the real me, I just felt there was so much more to me and to life than I was experiencing. Over these last few years, I have written to focus my thoughts and understand my feelings, understanding these are the very tools of creation. Thoughts, and the way we feel about them, become things. Taking charge of our thoughts and feelings begins a process of creating life experiences that are wanted rather than a result of lazy thinking. Lazy thinking is – for example – thoughts about hating a boss, a job, a partner. There is nothing wrong in having the thought, the point is to recognise the thought and recognise that unless you do something to change the thought you will continue to experience all the same things in the future. Note I’m saying “change the thought” rather than the boss, job or partner. You can do those things too, certainly the thoughts you have gathered about those will have a lot of momentum and are perhaps easier to change when there are not those specific people in your life. However, if you don’t learn to recognise and change the unhelpful thought patterns that led to those circumstances, you will simply attract them again in a different guise. So, yes, you can change your experiences in life. First there are those experiences with the things that you have personal relationships with – like your health, wellbeing, relationships and wealth. A good place to start, but as you undertake the journey and your experiences validate the power of your thoughts and feelings in your life, keep asking yourself about the bigger questions -“why am I here?”. “what is the purpose of my life?”, “what is the purpose of all life?”. As I did and discovered that the more I come to know, the more I realise I don’t know. Life is exponentially more amazing than I imagined. Muhammad Ali once said “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it”. I’ve known this to be true for a while. So let’s zone into something quite spectacular. Think Star Trek and “beam me up Scottie”, can a human dematerialise and then rematerialise in another place? In the same or a different time and space dimension? Only you can answer that for yourself. I have now had enough experience of my own existence in this physical body and of the non-physical energy that flows through it to believe that is indeed possible. Though is seems a rather intense process to put the physical body through when it is entirely possible to separate all that you are from your physical body temporarily and undertake experiences elsewhere much more easily. I was thinking this as I spent almost 60 hours in a metal tube flying through the air this week to visit loved ones. Now that really takes a toll on the body physically. Yet, if there was a more widespread understanding of the human capacity to do this, people who live at a distance could easily ‘visit’ or communicate with each other without the arduous undertaking of the body making the actual journey. You can remain skeptical of this, but should you wish to explore it, you will find there are examples out there of humans who have and do achieve this. And should you wish to not believe them, you will find evidence for that too. What remains at the heart of this is the controversy that we are eternal, non-physical beings who are simply having a physical experience in this time and space dimension. Instead we see ourselves cut-off from all that is and believe we are only this body and the thoughts it has. But for me, and the experiences that have led to me to this broader understanding of life, so much of the way we live and the things that cause pain are so unnecessary. If every thought that ever existed still remains, it is only energy after all, and you can access that ‘thought bank’ at any time, then why do we ‘educate’ our children? Why do we treat our children as empty vessels that need to “learn about the world”? What if they are actually only needing to learn how to best flow their energy through this physical apparatus they projected themselves into? Therein lies the problem. That is not something most of us know how to teach, and so for generations we have perpetuated this insanely limited and cut-off version of who we really are. What if nature can provide you with absolutely everything you need? There is nothing man has invented that even comes close to the natural world. You might think of modern technology as being something of an example, well, while the internet perhaps provides a conceptual example of what I am talking about in terms of the ‘thought bank’ I mentioned, it is vastly inferior to what already exists. But just look at water, The Miracle of Water was what came of me contemplating this for months as I walked along the beach. But you could do the same with air. Then there’s earth, an amazing ever-changing aspect of the planet, bringing us all that we need to be healthy. If we understood the power within nature to heal us, rather than relying on the synthetic versions produced by companies who are after money, a construct in itself created by humans to what? To keep you busy, to stop you from thinking about the absurdity of working to earn money to be able to buy food and shelter which is already available to every human being on the planet. The only reason it is not freely available is why? Why do governments exist? Why do the leadership of those governments not get the time to make quality decisions? Why do we entrust so much to people who haven’t got that quality time? Quality Time = Quality Decisions = Quality of Life. These are big questions, but money, education, healthcare, commerce, governments, the whole construct of our society today is so unnecessarily restrictive to human potential. If you are interested in opening up to alternatives to these just read things like Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations or Vladimir Megre’s Ringing Cedar series. And even death, it is thought of as a bad thing, a painful thing in our society. But if we believed we are non-physical and we are eternal, we might have a different vantage point of this process. Ask yourself the questions, start with you, and who you are, but keep asking and you will find that the secrets to your happiness and wellbeing are not so hard to find, for they lie within. To go within, step out into nature, meditate, it’s not hard, you just have to want to do it. If you are not entirely happy with your life, this is a starting point if you want it to be. Asking the big questions will lead to answers, and those answers will help you unlock the secrets to your best life. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Where do you do your best thinking? For me it’s at the beach, which is only a short drive away, and I make it a priority to get there regularly and alone.
Good for me, what a luxury to regularly get to the beach. Not so much, I have moved mountains to make quality thinking time a priority, even then it only happens in short bursts, but anything is better than nothing. If I’m at the beach and my kids are in tow, well, it’s unlikely much of my attention will be focused anywhere other than them. The same applies if I’m with a friend, or anyone else who is going to need my attention. It’s not just people who distract you from your inner world though, it’s all the thoughts that are swimming around your head about what has happened, what is happening and what needs to happen. That is what makes some form of regular meditation so vital, to quieten the less useful thoughts, the fog, and get some clarity and perspective on what is important. There’s no need to make a meal of meditation, the point is to do it regularly, 15 minutes is all you need, allow yourself to get in the habit of noticing and switching your thoughts instead of running on automatic pilot. These last few years I’ve written a lot about how we cloak ourselves in layer upon layer of others’ beliefs and expectations, derived mainly from our early childhood years and societal expectations, resulting in us not really dancing to the beat of our own drum. But what is it that leads to these expectations and how do we break free of them? Well, for a start, think about your beliefs. Do some quality thinking. These days with so many working outside the home, and so much media vying for your attention, it’s easy to get sucked along and not really do much thinking at all. As I read about the leaders of a country being so busy that they really didn’t get the time to make quality decisions, it led me to memories of the corporate world and all the unnecessary meetings and truckloads of email and other nonsense that constantly stood in the way of allowing enough space for quality thinking and, therefore, quality decisions to be made. It leads you to wonder who is shaping the thinking of today’s leaders? I read a thought provoking statement about Hitler the other day, that while his generals were held to account after the war for their actions, what about his advisors, his spiritual advisor for example? The whole thought pointed to Hitler as more of a puppet than a puppeteer. So setting aside that particular example, it does raise an interesting question - who are you, the puppet or the puppeteer? My mum, always so worried I’d be led astray by some dogma or other, asked me quite a few times when she read my early articles about who and what was influencing my thinking. I told her what I’ll repeat here, I do my own thinking and encourage everyone to do the same. Sure, listen, read things, read the opposite just to challenge yourself, but go with what feels right for you in that moment. I recall a conversation at two in the morning with an old mentor of mine (we were in different time zones) who was a whistle-blower on the leadership of an Amway distribution group that had been deceiving people about the extent of their profits coming from the personal development system, rather than the Amway products themselves. He said to me “If something feels off, Shona, trust yourself, it probably is”. That resonated, and it was a turning point for me in terms of self confidence. Over the last 20 years I’ve largely shut myself off from sources of distraction and persuasion – like TV, newspapers, social media etc, and tend to shun any kind of ‘group think’ in favour of my own thinking. You might wonder that I am therefore not abreast of ‘important’ current affairs, believe me it’s amazing what I seem to pick up by osmosis through everyone around me. It’s more amazing what people think is important, yet those same people aren’t taking the time to think about what is truly important. Those who read my articles regularly will know I’ve been encouraging people to start thinking about the big stuff – the “Why am I here? What is life about? What is my purpose?” stuff. It’s important; it will kick you into a different mode of thinking, one that can be less influenced by the plethora of media out there. It’s just as important – more so probably – for our younger generations to think about these things, they are leading us into the next evolution of our world after all. If you get caught up in the drudge of life, before you know it you’re at the other end, wondering what happened and wishing you’d spent more time dancing to the beat of your own drum, rather than doing what was expected of you by others. So what of all this? You do your best thinking and what? Well, you make better decisions, pure and simple. The kind of thinking and decisions many only make once a year (if that) when on holiday. This is how I like to live life. And right now I can tell you I’m happier than I’ve ever been, it’s been that way for a while. It doesn’t mean I don’t have challenges or that I don’t want more from my life, quite the opposite. It just means I make it a priority to make sure I have perspective, so I don’t get bogged down in drudge and get back on a hamster wheel. You are important, you are unique, you are worthy and you are enough. What do you want for your life? How do you want to feel day after day? Only you can make you a priority. If you don’t, no one else will. I can tell you something though, if you will make it a priority to give yourself the space to do some quality thinking on a regular basis, you will absolutely change the momentum of your life for the better. And that is good for everyone. I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Life was designed to be perfect
As were you and I Yet, far too often ‘less than’ is the now prevalent cry Really? Are you able to see what is all around? In nature energy and answers always abound Are we so cut off from our world we can’t see what really is? Instead we live our lives in some kind of indoctrinated fizz We took what was perfect and carved it to our demands Yet have created nothing as perfect or sustainable As already exists in our heart and our lands In fact we took our world and carved it in such a way As to make ourselves nothing but slaves both night and day When I am sick or sad or mad, it’s a gift for me to see What my inner world has been trying hard to tell me Help is always near in the natural world that we live Take a walk, feel the truth of all that actually is Switch off your device Stop listening to that clown The fizz is stifling; it keeps your thoughts spinning round Round the same old circuits, believing you are less Believing in what? The answer is anyone’s guess Whatever it is Is usually designed to keep you down Believing you are not enough Intended to wipe the smile, perpetuate a frown Do you know why you’re here? Do you know how perfect you are? Do you know that in all those questions you can ask The answer is never far Yet most live their lives The questions, even if asked Left unanswered as they hide behind the mask Go take time in nature Reach within and you shall see The answers are already there They exist within me I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others if they inspire, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Hello
I do not know where to begin, only that there must be some words inside to stir your heart with warmth. In the way it has been for generations we treated you like something that needed tamed, shaped. Like a horse, you got broken. This was society’s way, we knew better than the generation before, but only marginally. We stopped physically lashing out for the most part, but our words, feelings and actions were used to control you none the less. You came knowing your worth, your purpose, and your freedom. We have tried extremely hard to cast layer upon layer on top of your knowing, yet you still feel it do you not? Only now there is no clarity, for now we have succeeded in obscuring it. Clarity will come, but you have to seek it. To know who you are, why you are here, why any of us are here, these are important questions. Right now you believe you are learning to think for yourself. If you start to ask yourself these important questions about your life, there will come a point when you realise that your mind – a most powerful tool – is starting on those outer layers. You are heavily shrouded. Your first answers will be tainted. And more. Yet the answers lie within, keep going. What to do? What to say? To fail you, well, that was our path, and it is a perfect path because it can be nothing else. We have failed you miserably, yet not. Bad is good, in that it shows you the way if you choose to listen. We cannot go back in time, we can evolve from today. Your experiences will play their part in our evolution. Celebrate being not normal. Normal is a zombie of yesterday’s paradigm. As the saying goes, you did not come to live in this world, but to create a new one. We need a new paradigm on earth; you needn’t look far to see this. “But I need money to live”… trapped in today’s Earth. Our potential far exceeds the way we live today. Your potential is incomprehensible to those with rational minds; ignore them as best you can. The answers are there to find, look within. Imagine a life free of economic constraints. Imagine a life free of government control. Actually, be more basic, let’s start somewhere else, you are a teenager after all. Imagine a life free of parental control? Free of the limitations of an educational ‘system’. Imagine a life free of your neurosis about how you look? How you will appear to others. What others will think of you. Imagine a life free of sexual desire. In itself this desire is not a bad thing when it is born of love, but born of lust it is empty, soulless, you know this. So let’s go bigger, imagine a world where people act out of love. Wow, a world where people act only out of love? Sounds like a revisit to the 1970’s. Those hippies transcended their self limiting thoughts using drugs. The same exists today. You do not need drugs to transcend the thoughts we have shrouded you in. You only need to become conscious of how badly these thoughts mess with your happiness. Your thoughts are controllable, so are you feelings. Shoot, now I’ve let the cat out of the bag. Learning how to master that is key to mastering your future. Our future. The future of mankind. When your heart breaks, you have allowed someone’s opinion to become your reality. Realize there is nothing but opinions out there. Nothing said before, by anyone, is anything but opinion. There are no such things as facts – unless you would like me to cite the ‘facts’ of yesteryear to see what a ridiculous concept this is. One plus one does not always equal two, otherwise how would you exist? Man plus woman can equal man plus woman plus child in case you didn’t get that. Perspective changes depending on your plane of thinking. Include this stream of words among those that you need to discern for yourself the truth – and that lies within. Look into your heart for the answer. So you, young teenager, have much to think about. It will take you a lifetime so there is no hurry. For now, as always, enjoy what is before you. Just know that you are more than you thought, you are love personified and you worthy of the future you will create. Is that too big? Did I miss the mark? Then we have made you feel too small. The sadness you feel, the hurt you feel, the anger you feel, is you knowing that life is meant to be more. Yes indeed, you are more, and life is more. But you need to ask yourself those important questions – to know who you are, why you are here and why any of us are here - then go seek your best life and we will stand in amazement at the beautiful future you unfold. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. “Who am I?” I asked, “why are we here?”
The answer came and it keeps coming Obtusely my thoughts wander to my young daughter’s creations She often doesn’t know when to stop, beauty rapidly transforms into chaos I note this is where I am in my musings about life There is much to learn None of it taught in school In fact it is perhaps true to say What is important Is undone in school Though the truth begins before that, at the spawning, the dawning, of each life Parents so unaware of who they have created This tale could go on Let’s say for now that you are so much more than you know Our children, especially those in their first years Are much more so Imagine every thought that has ever been Held in a universal memory bank Instantly accessible to anyone to understands how to direct their attention We come knowing If we come able to access all that is and all that has been Then what use is a parent that tries to teach us to fit in to this world when we have come to create a new one? What use is a school system that teaches knowledge rather than enquiry? History rather than how to shape our future? Imagine your child knows all there is to know And you spend all your time convincing them they know nothing Teaching them fear in a bid to keep them safe Now look around, this is the world we live in I consciously try to focus my thoughts now Because I know my thoughts, together with the way I feel when I am thinking them, shape my reality I understand this isn’t some rah-rah designed to get me to hit my monthly target, drive a Ferrari or live in a mansion, this is serious shit This is the heart of all creation My hope for humanity Is that more of you start to take your thoughts seriously To shake off your shackles of yesteryear when you were taught how unimportant you are When you were subjected to a multitude of opinions that told you how unworthy you are And you see all of that for what it is, opinion Opinions that were relentless, when you were powerless Opinions that were manipulated generation upon generation Rendering you a mere shadow of your true nature Please step out of the shadow You are important Please start to take more care of your greatest gift Your thought Use it consciously Use it wisely It can lead you to your worst nightmare or your best life You decide If I can be more conscious of my own thoughts Heed my own words Then there is indeed hope Taking charge of our own lives, our own feelings, our own thoughts This too, is simply another opinion My hope for humanity Is that you look into your heart And you feel the truth of your own power For human potential to flower again This is my hope Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Possibility has been on my mind a lot lately, I seem to be drawn to stories about the extraordinary capabilities of our kind. I’m not talking particularly about the physical feats of athletes, more about what is possible – natural even - in terms of wellness, healing, intellect and communication.
A few years ago when I watched the sci-fi movie Lucy, starring Scarlett Johanssen and Morgan Freeman, based around the concept that humans don’t use more than 10-15% of the brain’s capacity, I cried. Through an accidental overdose of a mythical synthetic drug, Lucy develops extraordinary abilities (such as telekinesis and telepathy), eventually as the drug continues to be absorbed into her system, she is unable to sustain her human form and dematerializes into non-physical energy. I cried because I felt the movie, albeit a fictional account, had hit upon several truths: one being we are all energy coming into and out of form, the other is our conscious awareness of that energy (and its power and potential) are – even when recognised – so underused. Then last year when I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the revised edition with an added fourth part, I felt that also explored the same concept with the added depth of perceptiveness into why humans have shunned the powers and insights available to us. It’s no surprise that since then I’ve also uncovered stories of people alive today who are both consciously aware of their powers and use them to great effect, two recently were particularly interesting. There are the abilities of Teal Swan to divert her waking consciousness to other realms, though her abilities were enhanced by a rather brutal and harrowing start in life. Then there’s the contrasting story of Anastasia, someone you could call a hermit living in nature, who displays extraordinary intellect, wellbeing and knowledge as well as healing powers and astonishing powers of non-physical communication. The interesting thing about these stories, whether you believe them or not, is the possibilities that open up. While I have talked about my own spiritual awakening and the abilities that seem to be opening up in my own life, what I am constantly drawn to are these bigger secrets of the universe. Listening to anyone who clearly channels wisdom greater than that stored in their own head is completely fascinating. It quickly becomes apparent how crude our current science and technology is, and how little we are tapped into both the physical and non-physical worlds around and within us. The question for me is what to do with this expanded view? It’s not that I feel compelled to uncover the secrets of sound energy as indicated by Abraham Hicks in response to a question asked about the pyramids in Egypt, or to investigate the accuracy of Anastasia’s theory for quickly and economically reducing city pollution by 30-40% by inserting a filter of sorts in car bumpers, or the plethora of theories about what our natural environment has to offer or theories in relation to child rearing – in that respect I feel more like I’m awakening to truths already known. As I look around at our world, it’s no mistake that I have felt more than a little dissatisfaction with our education systems, healthcare systems, judicial systems and the very systems of government and enterprise themselves. The premise and philosophies most of our ‘first world’ societies are based on feel too limiting, too primitive and, well, frankly, cut off from what is right under our noses. Many times I’ve wondered about at the questions that arise from apocalyptic stories, and how most of us would fare in a world without ‘modern’ conveniences. And I’ve always been drawn to the ancient wisdom of tribal communities who seem much more in touch with nature and the world around and within them. Yet none of this has compelled me into fields of learning or discovery beyond that which first grabs my attention; I learn what I need to, when I need to, following my intuition. Anastasia was brought up in the purity of nature, in Siberia, well away from human communities of any sort; her raw potential nurtured and allowed to flourish. In contrast I chose a life experience like most, in a society that caused me to close off my intuition early on and learn based on reason, authority and rational explanation. Only 7 or 8 years ago, I was undergoing a Myers Briggs psychometric evaluation as part of a corporate restructure/career planning process that all the senior managers were subject to. By this point in my career I had undergone so many psychometric tests it was hard to keep up with all the labels – and anyone who knows the MBTI evaluation knows it results in 16 boxes you can find yourself in. What really struck me at this point was just how lost I was. In my early twenties when I started doing these kinds of tests, they were fascinating, illuminating even, facilitating lots of personal growth. However, nearing my forties, I was starting on a more determined path to an authentic career. The consultant and I spent a long time discussing sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling and judgement versus perception. Now I look back and can see clearly I was emerging from the highly rational, mind-oriented, society-indoctrinated cocoon that had wrapped around Shona Keachie and been presented to the world for nearly four decades. But at that point I couldn’t even clearly answer questions about using my intuition; I just couldn’t decipher who I was. Compare this to the me who has embraced my highly intuitive psychic abilities lately. So I am starting to get a clearer picture about what is possible for humanity, the question is what to do about it? All of this possibility and no clear impulse yet. That is the crux of my musing, life is always full of possibilities regardless of where your spheres of interest lie, the question is what you will do with those possibilities. Of course, I don’t want to get to the end of my life and wish I had done something and instead done nothing, but that is unlikely given my track record. Neither am I going to rush off to the Siberian taiga to find myself, though I do have an undeniable thirst for nature. What I lack at this point is clarity. And that is okay. If I look back at the twists and turns in my own life, I have faith that I will know when the time is right and I’ll act on whatever it is that has inspired me. So I shall just keep interested in following the clues that seem to present themselves – which basically just means I’ll keep doing whatever I feel inspired to do, be it read another book or tune into to anothers’ story or take a walk on the beach. That is all you can do. The world is full of possibilities, can you see those in your own life? Just follow your inspiration one day at a time to uncover your best life. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. If you are of my generation – I’m a generation X-er – or older, you were likely brought up in a culture where there was deference to authority. The word of the government, and those systems run by government (the health care system and the education system), or the word of the church, and the people called to them and employed within them “knew better”.
This was a carryover from the hugely powerful opinions that dominated for centuries. As white men adopted technology and thought they knew better than the “savages” they “civilized” large parts of the globe. Let’s cut to the wise words sung in Colours of the Wind in Disney’s Pocahontas: You think you own whatever land you land on The earth is just a dead thing you can claim But I know every rock and tree and creature Has a life, has a spirit, has a name You think the only people who are people Are the people who look and think like you But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger You'll learn things you never knew And so as the money that ‘great’ British Empire was built upon diminished, people are slowly learning that the great systems of government - even those created in ‘breaking free’ of the Empire - are no longer so great after all. There was a time when healthcare actually involved a deeper level of care, and sadly many who are healers and compassionate in their core are drawn into a system that is more about budgets and targets these days. In the words of Alan Shore, played by James Spader, in Boston Legal: “The fact is the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development. That’s obscene!” Albeit this is from a fictional storyline, it points to something that is evident. Dee McCaffrey (one of the government scientists that put together the original food pyramid, the government’s recommendations of healthy proportions of food groups) talks about how pressure from the big food companies ended up in the pyramid changing, with way more emphasis on bread than was actually though healthy. She also talks about the history of stevia – a natural sweeter that does not upset the chemical balance within your body in the same way as refined sugars and sweetners, and can be harvested quite cheaply in plentiful amounts – and how the company selling artificial sweeteners in the early part of the twentieth century lobbied the government to ensure stevia was discredited and made unavailable. Yet many still look to their doctor for healthcare advice and treatment. Doctors study for jobs that largely involve surgical procedures and pharmaceutical interventions that ‘bomb the enemy’. Look to any war to see the devastation that creates in society for decades, even centuries, beyond. The same is true within the microcosm of society that exists within our own bodies. Alternative therapies and/or complementary therapies have been positioned in a derogatory way next to the big pharmaceuticals. Setting aside energy medicines that are based on the belief we are made of energy and essentially non-physical beings having a physical experience (that is a whole other debate, but you will find fields like neuroscience and epigenetics are now starting to point to this), even those therapies that have a direct effect on the physical system, like nutritional supplements, massage therapy and herbal remedies are often seen as woo woo. Even when they are not, too many people still put their healthcare in the hands of “medical professionals” who are generally less likely to have the knowledge and experience about these alternative and complementary therapies – never mind funding - that can help the patient back to a point of wellbeing. Certainly very few are funded to offer these as treatment routes. Meanwhile there are many more health practitioners out there who have studied many of these alternative therapies in great depth, and continue to keep abreast of the latest research and findings despite the many attempts to discredit or downplay their importance. But because of an ingrained deference to the ‘authority’ of traditional systems, too many people are still missing out. If you haven’t looked lately, over the last 20 years huge swaths of research and studies have been undertaken around the world that seek to understand alternative medicines and their effects on humans, and to understand our emotional wellbeing and its’ effects on illness, and even to understand consciousness itself. I could talk in similar ways about the education system, and its effect on burgeoning humans – and the various doctrines of any church. Dare I say all of these things are simply the perspective of a person. Even those whom channel the energy of that you might call God, or spirit, have channeled it through their physical apparatus with all of its limitations. This is a perspective, it is no more valid or credible – and no less so – than anyone else’s. Each person experiences life from a different vantage point, and (regardless of training and experience) all anyone EVER has to offer you is an opinion. No more, no less. Look to our new generations, who pay much less attention to ‘authority’ because they see it for the falsehood it is, it is only an opinion, and certainly it is not absolute. The only opinion that really counts, the only ONE truth, is the truth you hold within yourself in this moment. I’m not talking about the truth as you were taught to believe it, the one that speaks from the facts and figures stored in your mind, I’m talking about the wisdom that resides in your own heart, your own intuition, which can always discern your own truth, the way that is best for you right now. Putting your life, whether in its physical, mental or spiritual capacity, in the hands of any other authority than your own, is detrimental to your wellbeing. Sure, seek advice, seek opinions, but take charge of your beliefs, question the thoughts that reside as a result of your early upbringing, they may no longer serve you. Not to put too fine a point on it, reexamining your beliefs can save your life. Take your wellbeing into your own hands. Your own opinion is the only one that counts. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. When who you are, your most authentic self, carries a stigma...
“Who the heck AM I?” I wondered. I had just, quite unexpectedly, told my good friend what her dead sibling had to say to her. That was over 2 years ago. I was – and still am – on a deliberate journey to figure out who I am. I had left the corporate world more than 6 months beforehand and had started publishing a blog. Writing helped me focus on what I wanted to say, or find out. As I wrote I came to realise that we are each a bit like onions, with layer upon layer of self-limiting beliefs we have picked up in our lifetime. I also recognised the joy and release in focusing my attention in the present, and that joy is our natural state. The year before I had awakened fully to my spirituality, a series of dots suddenly joining, but this phenomenon was something new. Growing up I had heard about psychics and mediums, if I’m honest they probably scared and intrigued me a little, but I really had nothing to do with anyone like that – mainly because I didn’t know anyone like that. It was the stuff of fairgrounds and gypsies so far as I knew. My upbringing was conservative, as was society. I wasn’t aware of anyone I knew who was ‘different’ in any way. It was really only through media hype, reading fiction, self-development and watching movies and sci-fi that my world expanded. When I watched the first version of The Secret DVD in 2006, I listened again and again to Esther Hicks, her words were so poignant and wise, and I was eventually intrigued by the subtitle “Voice of Abraham”, wondering what that meant. When I later watched The Secret Behind the Secret DVD, which is Esther’s story, I began to understand that she was channeling a more universal intelligence than that which resided in her own mind. At the same time I was starting out in a new country and looking for someone I could bounce ideas off of as I built my life, someone who could give me a broader perspective. A friend recommended a lady who was a ‘psychic remedial psychologist’. The word psychic didn’t sit comfortably with me, but I decided to meet her anyway. I talked, she listened, and she’d reflect back to me what she had heard. Except sometimes she’d reflect back to me what she’d heard without me ever talking. While there was a frustration in not being able to mentally offload at times, what I was hearing resonated so I kept listening and by the end of the session felt lighter without saying much of anything. It was a strange experience really because she never explained what psychic meant, or tried to teach me the art, she simply amplified back to me what she was sensing or conveyed what she was hearing. Only now do I understand it enough for it to seem quite normal to me. Now I can quite easily articulate that, given that we are just energy at our essence, with that energy preceding all thought, and thought (and, more importantly, feelings in relation to those thoughts) creating the experiences we are having, interpreting the energy doesn’t seem so weird. In fact, we all do it every day, it’s called our intuition. Psychic ability is simply the ability to turn up the volume on your intuition. We all have (and generally acknowledge) intuition, we do not all – however – acknowledge the existence of anything more than we can process with our physical senses, nor do we all agree on what that non-physical realm might be. This creates a conundrum. If the fullest expression of who you are is something the world at large recognises and agrees on, great. If not, it can be a bit tricky. Listening to JP Sears talk recently on the topic of self acceptance, I was reminded of a concept that I have heard Eckhart Tolle, Esther Hicks and many others talk about, and it this idea that you are not your beliefs. Your beliefs are, after all, just a repeated thought pattern and can be changed. He was also talking about the importance – for him – of being playful about his spiritual beliefs because this helps to remind him he is not his beliefs. Acknowledging that we each have our own truth, there is no ‘one’ truth, kind of got me stuck in that conundrum for a while. If I ‘came out’, psychically speaking, would I be rejected? And who is the ‘I’ that could be rejected? I am not my beliefs, this I can see. I think it was Esther Hicks that pointed out the need to get others to agree with us is the single cause of conflict in our world and it’s so unnecessary. What you or I believe might shape what we think, do and feel, but it’s not ‘you’ or ‘me’. I then began to wonder whether this ability to turn up the dial on my intuition was ‘me’. Well, it’s a gift, but does a gift define ‘me’? It still didn’t feel like the whole answer. If I take a broader perspective, acknowledging it’s within the confines of my own beliefs, if we are all one energy coming into and out of form, then ‘me’, the one writing this now, is simply a point of focus until this body stops breathing. Like a wave on the ocean. Therefore the “I’ or the ‘me’ who was realizing my psychic ability, can’t really be rejected, only the idea of it can be rejected. As I shared some stories with my parents on how this was unfolding, ‘coming out’ as you might call it, they rejected the whole idea, yet - strangely - I didn’t feel rejected. After some initial feelings of defensiveness and frustration, I asked “do I feel rejected?” and can honestly say that, no, I don’t, I still feel loved. I think this idea of who “I’ am, is just an intention. It’s like the wave on the ocean, perhaps a bit like a wave that finds itself on a river inlet when it had intended to break on the shore of a sandy beach, I just have a sense of what I intended for my life and whether the experience was a match to it. In my corporate guise it was not, just writing and producing articles it was not entirely either. However, when I receive and pass on messages, whether to myself or others, well, that feels more of a fit. Where the messages come from, whether they are a translation of an answer to a desire or a question a person has, or whether they are delusional, is really of no consequence. What is of consequence is whether the messages help. This is how I felt in the years preceding my own spiritual awakening when I’d connect in with my psychic remedial psychologist. I used to call her ‘my voodoo woman’ to my friends, in order to disassociate from the term psychic. Putting aside the term and any construct in her belief system, the messages resonated, so I kept listening. And so it is that I tell readers and individuals to simply take what resonates. It doesn’t really matter how you hear something, in this context or any other, if it helps, keep it; if it doesn’t, ditch it. I can’t say where any of this is going in my own life, there is so much learning and growing to be done to ever be as good at it as my psychic remedial psychologist or the likes of Esther Hicks. I don’t think I’ll be updating my title on LinkedIn to Medium anytime soon, but who knows? It’s interesting that neither of the two teachers I have named (Esther and Eckhart) have ever labeled themselves with their ability, not wanting it to stand in the way of people hearing the messages. While a crystal ball would certainly fit with the image some might conjure, translating energy can only ever apply to what is in the now – and since we each create our own energy and have free choice – we each determine our own future in the choices we make in each moment. I can only tell myself what I’d tell anyone, that when you are in touch with who you really are, and you are expressing that to the world, it can only help you to live your best life, therein making this world a better place. Have the courage to be who you are, the world needs you. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. How many things are there in your life that feel more like an obligation or a chore than a joy?
Stuff You Shouldn’t Be Doing Trusting I’m enough, instead of being the perfect parent, perfect school mum, perfect friend, perfect daughter, I could go on and on, actually requires a bigger act of trust on my part than believing that there’s something bigger than me. Yet if I believe there is something bigger than me, something powerful enough that lines up circumstances and events to bend to my desires, a trust in life that results in things always working out for me (at least in the end), it should follow that I must be worthy of these? That is a big disconnect for most of us, resulting from years of having our behaviour corrected and being told – often in well-meaning and certainly in many guises - we are not good enough. This results in many of us acting out of fear, shame and guilt, doing things we think we really should ‘if we were a good person’; I often have to stop and question these in my quest for authenticity. Right now I’m contending with the annual school fair that the parents at my kids’ school are required to run. I not only feel the pressure myself but see it in so many around me. There is so much to do to get ready for it (it’s a big community event), and too many people dancing to the beat of someone else’s drum, instead of looking at it through the lenses of what they’d like to contribute, the things that would give them satisfaction and joy. Shame and guilt feature prominently in the landscape of already overwhelmed parents. And that is just a poxy fair (not to diminish our wonderful event, but you get what I mean). It takes courage to say no, and to do that without any defense. If you are finding yourself justifying what you’re saying no to, you are still in defense mode. Practice focusing on what you can and want to do instead. I call it win-win-win giving. When you can do that it creates more space in your life for what’s truly important. Stuff You Really Should Be Doing This is about your goals and dreams, the stuff that is both big and small. Do you even know who you’d rather be and what you’d rather do beyond all those obligations you feel? Another way of asking is whether you are acquainted with the person you were born to be? Knowing who I am and what I want, truly, and feeling like that is enough or that I’m brave enough or worthy are ongoing for me. It started with a deliberate journey to authenticity, now well documented, but it continues to be something that takes practice. One of my kids’ favourite story series is about a young brother and sister who time-travel in a magic tree house. I love listening to the stories as the kids (both mine and the characters in the stories) learn so much from their missions. There have been many stories where they’ve helped famous figures in history connect in with their greatness long before it was recognised. In the one we are listening to now, Jack and Annie have gone back to a time when Florence Nightingale is a just young lady, before she ever served on the battlefields, she was an aristocrat spurned by her circle for not acting the way a lady of her breeding should, and certainly it was unthinkable that she should be a nurse. There have also been the stories of helping Wolfgang Amadeus connect in with his musical talent and Leonardo Da Vinci and Louis Armstrong and many others beside believe in themselves. While these are just fictional accounts, albeit written with great mastery, they are a great reminder that the world would have missed out on some amazing inventions, contributions and people if we were simply born to comply with other people’s expectations of us. I will continue to beat the drum of worthiness in my own ears and those of anyone who will listen. If you can trust that you are enough, and ditch any defense and time wasting crap, and trust that the universe will always find ways you can’t even think of to deliver your desires, even just some of the time, you will start to open yourself up to the best version of your life. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. I’ve always believed that – in the bigger scheme of things - things work out for all of us. Sure, we might experience pain – a lot - along the way, but certainly when I look back on my life there isn’t a single thing I’d change. Everything that has happened has ultimately benefited me in some way.
Despite that belief, I have also spent too many years trying to make things happen, feeling like I’m swimming upstream. “If it’s going to be it’s up to me”, I just didn’t realise what that actually meant. I didn’t realise that my work was to figure out what I wanted, and then to trust it would happen. I don’t mean that things would just drop into my lap, though things like that have happened from time to time, often when they are things that – while I certainly wanted them - I wasn’t so wedded to wanting them that I was dwelling on not having them. Like the time I had a salary figure in my head of $150k as being my worth in the market, and out of nowhere I got more than a $25k raise to match the salary I had in mind. I didn’t need the raise, our bills were taken care of, and I wasn’t expecting it. If I had been, I likely wouldn’t have come so easily, that is the irony of feeling needy. Or the time I imagined finding a huge shell on the beach where I usually walk, where there are soft sandy beaches and hundreds of smaller shells, and then I found a great beauty just the day after wishing for it. Or more recently, we started dreaming of a holiday in Hawaii and then were gifted one in Fiji (no need to split hairs, it was a tropical paradise minus the consumerism, so it worked out well). But often there are things I want and I do feel their lack. The big one that so many relate to was when I was trying to get pregnant, which is a whole other story of its own. Then there was coming home from that holiday in Fiji and realizing it had created a desire for more than just 6 weeks of reliably hot sunny days a year, the kind of days where you just want to flop in a pool. Interestingly the first question I get when I share that is “where would you live?” or something similar. The ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ are where trust comes in. I can spend hours researching options and trying to make things happen. I can try to reason with my partner when he says “well I’m not moving, I’ve spent so much time and effort establishing a business here.” But what’s the point in that? The answer may not be in moving, it may be in travelling more or something else I haven’t ever thought of. At this juncture, it’s just a thought, the seed of desire, I feel no urge to check anything specific out; anything I do think of feels like too much effort or not quite right. That is where I’ve pushed through in the past, if I’ve felt it important enough, making it my mission to make it happen. Yet when the timing is right and the stars are lined up, I know I’ll feel inspired to take action if it’s needed and the transformation will be relatively effortless. Too often I’ve experienced happenstance and serendipities to disregard their role in life. There was a time when trusting in life wasn’t something I was inclined to do, but a lot of years of hindsight have helped me see that things always seem to work in my favour in the end, and I wasted too much time worrying along the way. I was reading an old collection of Enid Blyton books to the kids recently, about a family with three small children who live in a caravan and have all sorts of adventures. In one book they look after another little boy throughout the summer holidays as his mum is very sick. There is a conversation between Ann (the youngest caravan child) and Benjy (the stranger) where they’re talking about saying prayers, and Benjy feels his are not really heard (by God, the Universe, whoever). Ann is shocked and says “well you can’t feel very safe then” and he replies that he doesn’t “I’m always afraid something awful is going to happen”. Trusting that life works perfectly if you go with its flow, remaining alert to the things that you feel called to, the things that inspire you, makes life so much easier and much more relaxed. My lesson now is taking this tact with the day to day things that irk me, like queues, slow traffic, fundraisers at school, the school fair (organized by parents), so many things about school! Yet if I can remember to remember that things always work out, it eases the pressure, it takes away the angst of feeling that I’m ‘needing to’ do certain things. That ties in with feels about my own self worth, another topic to explore. Trusting in life and its ability to bend to your every desire, whether relatively trivial or deeply important, takes practice – and it’s a lot easier to start in the realms of the trivial. But just make a start, the very next thing that irritates or inconveniences you (it won’t take long), just try saying “thank you” and remember to remember that things always work out. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. Don’t be dissuaded from your own true nature. But be sure to know what that is.
I heard an author talk about virtue recently, saying how undervalued, how unpopular it has become in our society. True perhaps when you look at social groups. Yet I was reflecting that it’s interesting that when looking for a mate, or to someone in authority, or to those we elect, those virtuous qualities are generally still important to us. My mother-in-law came for a visit last week and saw all the banner advertising as she drove into town, we have an impending national election here in New Zealand in the next month or so. She was telling me what a farce it’s turning into and how out of date many of the banners are already due to public scandal and resignations. Yes I live my life happily without ever watching or reading the news, why on earth would I want to track that kind of nonsense? It’s not the world I want to live in and I’m not going to fuel it by giving it my attention. I’m also not entirely sure why anyone else does? Years ago I recall a friend taunting “don’t choke on your halo Shona”, and it really upset me. Not so much because I didn’t want anyone to think I was a goody-two-shoes, I didn’t care whether they thought that or not, what I cared about was not wanting to appear sanctimonious. I’ve never seen myself as superior to anyone, nor anyone as superior to me, morally or otherwise. We can know more about certain things than each other, or have different talents or experiences, but we are all in this game of life together. One affects all. When I was a child, there was talk of our school fighting another school. I don’t know how this started, but I do know even my best friend turned up with a wrench. I was scared, not so much of getting hurt as I had no intention of being anywhere near, but that this pointless bravado would result in others getting needlessly hurt. I just knew the right thing to do was blow the whistle, so I did. I have no idea if anyone ever knew it was me, I wouldn’t have proactively told people but wouldn’t have shirked away from an answer if I had been asked, yet no one ever said anything. Now as I see even my young 6 year old in school, there’s something about a social group that seems to bring out the worst in human behaviour, all in pursuit of being popular. Why is bad behaviour so popular among a group I wonder? And why does virtue tend to lack more when people think they can get away with it? I think we generally rebel from feelings of being quashed ourselves, being indoctrined into society means being told what not to do, and rebuked for doing it, from the moment we start to interact with the world. Less than virtuous behaviour is generally our way of clawing back power, yet the irony is that the power always resides within us. Virtue is not just for the few, virtue is a quality we are born with. Yet as adults it is often proffered as an undesirable trait, naive even. No one wants to be seen as naïve, nor as overly goody-good, why not? I want people to treat me in a virtuous way, with honour and kindness. I want to live in a society that displays that in its political systems, corporations, education and healthcare. We seem to be born into this world in pretty good shape, loving, full of joy and self worth, then we become subject to the opinions of others. Why do we place so much importance on those? I understand as a youngster so much is out of our control, big people are in the driving seat, and boy we seem to do a lot of damage in a short space of time. It’s like a collective collusion to disable our next generation. In the guise of teaching what is right (which, frankly, does not need taught, only demonstrated) we seem to knock down and rebuild; rendering the adult a former shadow of the self who arrived as a baby, and more of a drone. The birth of new generations perhaps takes us inching towards a better world, but the pace is painstakingly slow, encumbered by the relentless tides of knocking each new hope’s self confidence and filling heads with utter nonsense. Wake up people. You were born to this life with a purpose, you came knowing love, self worth, knowing virtue. Love yourself enough to be virtuous . You are not powerless, you always have the choice to do the right thing, and it is never fruitless nor too late. You don’t need to take a stand against anything, you just need to take a stand for the right thing. Fighting against something, anything, is a waste of energy, it fuels the very thing you want to get away from, just focus on what you do want, and live that life. Small things, figuring out the right thing to do can sometimes perplex, especially when ‘”doing the right thing” has become somewhat of a euphemism for sacrifice. The fact is, if it doesn’t make you feel good, trust your instincts and don’t go along with it. Like this week when I was angsting about throwing a birthday party for my kids who both have birthdays coming up in the next few months. I simply don’t want to do a party for either, but both my kids love parties and want one because many of their friends have them, so I was feeling like maybe I should. In the end it took someone wiser than me to point out that it is a better thing to teach the kids to be true to themselves by being true to myself. There are plenty of things I feel inspired to do for the kids, and they don’t go short of anything really, but this is not one of those things. Each of these little dilemmas in life provides insights to our best life, and the answers are easier to find when you allow yourself a bit of space, taking regular time to fill your own cup. Try and get out into nature, take your lead from the examples all around. Despite some of the atrocities in the world, the sun keeps coming up, doing its thing. The leaves keep growing, shoots keep forming, rain keeps falling, and rivers keep flowing. Nature is not dissuaded from its true nature as we are, so it’s easier to get grounded in nature, tethering your resolve to its aspect. Look within, be virtuous, and you will be victorious in living your best life. Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at [email protected], I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You. |
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