 "Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones."
--Thich Nhat Hanh One of the things I’m working on is to not catastrophize. It’s a mindset in which you take a current situation and give it a negative spin or you anticipate all the things that are going to go wrong in the future. I tend towards the future oriented way of expressing this mindset. I can see dozens of different possible outcomes…mostly negative. It’s not a fun way to live. But I’ve become more aware of it recently, and so I can now heal it. I can notice when I do it and stop it. The more often I notice it, the more often I’ll have an opportunity to get creative and see some positive outcomes. And maybe I don’t have to spend so much time in the future anyway. Maybe I can just notice, stop, breathe and be in the present moment. There is much healing going on for me right now with lots of stuff coming to the surface so I can heal it. Through all of this I have to remind myself that healing is really just a revealing of the wholeness that is within me always. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking there are things wrong with me, even when I don’t use that language. Just being in “fix-it mode” is being in the mindset that there is something to fix. This spiritual path is like walking two paths at once, the path of being human and the path of being Divine. Or maybe it’s like walking a beam between the two and we learn to navigate it by being in balance. One of the ways I do that is by using the spiritual tools I’ve learned over the years. Mindfulness meditation is great for this as are affirmations and affirmative prayer. Affirmative prayer focuses on a positive outcome rather than a negative situation. I’m grateful to be on this path and am enjoying the journey more often now. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. If you’d like to know more about the spiritual tools I use or would just like to talk, you can contact me here.
1 Comment
10/21/2015 0 Comments Delving Into the Deep I’m changing the focus of this blog. It used to be a place where you could find tips to help you build and live your life. There are hundreds of blogs and e-zines out there that give you that kind of information. And I plan to write for some of them. But here, I want to do something else. Right now I’m in the midst of a rebirth process or what Elizabeth Lesser calls the Phoenix Process. What does this mean? Well, it means I’m in the process of waiting and letting go of the old me. As I get clear in a particular area I do a little rebuilding. But mainly it’s living in uncertainty about what it is I want to do with this business and with my life. As I say on my Home page, most people will tell you about the bad times and then say how great everything is now. Some will actually walk you through a process they created out of what they went through, but that’s a refined process and not the raw experience. And it’s their process, not necessarily one that will work for you. Lately I’ve come across a couple of people like Elizabeth Lesser who may have some guidelines for their process, but also share the long involved rawness of their story. They use their story to model for the rest of us what this rebirth thing looks and feels like. Brené Brown speaks about this in her latest book Rising Strong. So, what I’m attempting here is to share my story, my process as it happens. This is just as much for me as it is for you. I’m hoping this will keep me awake and motivated to keep going. I’m hoping it won’t make me stay at the surface. I’m not one to share all and I will be selective, but I also know that I must go deep. I must truly allow myself to be in the underworld to learn as much as I can about myself so I have the tools to return reborn. I hope by doing this you’ll be encouraged to allow your own Phoenix or rebirth process to unfold. It’s so important to honor the dark nights as well as the brilliant days. By going deep we can bring forth our strengths and learn to accept our weaknesses. And often we learn that what we thought were our weaknesses are really our strengths. "Life is always changing; we are always changing. We live in a river of change, and a river of change lives within us. Every day we’re given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place. If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand mountain streams will be with us, filling our hearts with courage and enthusiasm." |
Brick by Brick
A soul journey. Building a life
|
RSS Feed
