To Understand Your Full Potential, It Is Necessary To Step Into The Unknown, Part Two

In part One of this blog we talked about how:

• Every story has a story.
• How the story is shaped and defined as you grow.
• The way forward is never down a straight and narrow path.
• Growth is like what happens in the “Alice In Wonderland” story, where you do “Six impossible things before breakfast”.
• We think that growth is a linear measurement.  It isn’t.
• All growth doesn’t happen with forward momentum.
• Progress can happen when it feels like you’re sitting still; when it feels like you’re backing up
• Progress can happen even when you are walking in circles lost in the woods; when it’s one minute before the midnight deadline

Charting your course means that you need to be open to adjustments, revisions, false starts, rewriting your goals, refocusing your passions.  You need to be able to both dig in your heels and let go at the same time.  You must, must, must have a willingness to change.

Step 1 – Be Curious

Step 2 – Live life as an Imperfectionist

Step 3 – Have Dragonfly Eyes

What I love about “Alice In Wonderland” is that nothing that she experiences was normal, predictible behavior.  Her journey gets started because she is curious.  She follows the white rabbit, who was talking to himself about being late and holding a timepiece as he runs by.  Curious, she follows him down a rabbit hole and falls into an unbelievable world.  She is faced with choice after another choice, with no reliable way of knowing what one is the right one.

Along the journey she meets The Caterpillar with his famous line, “Who are you?”.  He helps Alice to adapt to Wonderland by eating the magic mushroom.

She meets The Cheshire Cat several times in her journey.  He floats, evaporates and disappears and shapeshifts throughout her journey as he offers cryptic pieces of advice.  He is the only character who actually listens to Alice as he attempts to help her navigate Wonderland.

In Alice’s adventures through Wonderland she is faced with truly “wicked problems” as she trys to get back home with her head still attached.  It is her curiosity that gets her through as she meets  new characters and tries to understand the stories strange rules of how life operates in Wonderland.

As you live your life you will come across many rules that others blindly follow, without asking themselves ‘why’.  When you ask why, they will say, “that’s the way it has always been done”, because they don’t even know why.  They have no curiosity about the rules.  “It’s just the way they do things here”, they will say.

Step 4

“Life is like a game of chess. To win you have to make a move. Knowing which move to make comes with insight and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are accumulated along the way. We become each and every piece within the game called life.” – Allan Rufus

Each chess Game consists of 32 initial pieces.   The game of chess has specific rules on how each of the pieces can be moved.  In theory it is possible for a game of chess to never end, with an infinite number of moves.  Consider the whole board when making a move, because each move impacts the entire board.

When my kids were teenagers I used to try to get them to understand the importance of the decisions they were making in their lives using the chessboard analogy.  I taught them that while the move or decision that they were making might be according to the rules and thus legal, it didn’t make it the right decision.  Sometimes the right decision is to take another path.

The chessboard shows up in Alice’s journey in Wonderland.  “Chessboard Behavior” in this quote refers to how in playing the game of chess you make strategic moves.  You think ahead to the piece you are contemplating on moving.  You try to guess the other players response and then your response in turn.  You envision out multiple moves and then then go back and think through another move and contemplate it out several moves.  You keep doing this until you can choose the best strategy.

While you are guessing on the other players moves, as you get to know how they play the game, your guesses become more and more accurate.  You gain knowledge, skills, and with natural talent you can make winning choices.

“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.”
– Thomas Huxley

Step 5

There is an article published called “Brain-Heart” which contains way too much information and is in such detail that it isn’t easy to put into a simple sentence or two.  In this article, he links spiritual traditions and science together in an interesting way.  He is demonstrating Dragonfly Eye thinking, by combining the boxes of both science and religion to see what else could explain how in quantum physics atoms could be linked across far distances.  That energy is informed by what David Bohm called the implicate order and what physicists now regard as the quantum vacuum or zero-point field.

The experience of the universal domain of consciousness, is the same in all religions, and in all religions it inspires a sense of oneness and belonging. Michael Beckwith affirms that “when you strip away the culture, history, and dogma of every religion, the teachers of those religions were teaching very similar principles and practices that led to a sense of oneness.”

Ervin Laszlo says, the quantum vacuum is like  “the Akashic Field of ancient Hindu spiritual tradition. The Hindu say the Akashic record is a field from which all the universe is formed and which holds all that ever was, is or will be.   The Hindu also say that the Big Bang that started the universe, and the big crunch that will happen when the universe goes into reverse and collapses back into itself, is only a part of many cycles of universes, just like ours, appearing and disappearing, just like the subatomic particles in our world.”

Putting this into a simple example that I read about many years ago, is what happened around the world when 9/11 happened.  Scienctist have for many, many years recorded the magnetic waves rising from the earth into space.  Many months had passed since 9/11 and they were looking back over time tracking the waves on the report when they noticed a huge spike simultaneously around the world.  When they tracked backwards they discovered it happened just as the planes were hitting the twin towers.  It was if the information had been communicated around the world at the exact same moment.  It was the field.

I remember the day as though it was yesterday.  Literally 20 minutes before the crash I was writing in my journal before work.  In my journal I recorded how I couldn’t comprehend how someone could become so wrapped up in hate and dogma that they felt that God wanted them to kill people they didn’t even know, who had done nothing to them.  They hadn’t committed an act of atrocity that required revenge.  The actions themselves are designed to create fear, chaos and hatred – to cause separation.  The planes hit the towers as I was driving to work.  It still gives me goose bumps as I feel that in that moment of writing I had tapped into the field.  I didn’t know what was about to happen, but somehow I knew something was about to happen.

When you tap into this field, I think you tap into divine guidance.  In mediation, in journal writing, in walking through the forest – there are times when your mind is freed from the controlling structures you keep it in.  When intuition comes forth.  It’s how you get the idea to call a friend or family member.  It’s how when you have that thought, the phone rings and it is them.  It’s a connection to the field.

Step 6

Storytelling engages the emotions required for actions.  Show and tell is how you connect others to your story.   When you want to sell something showing through storytelling is like sitting them in a theater to watch an engaging drama.  You can make them cry (pictures of abused animals or a small child in torn dirty clothing looking like they are going to cry).  Commencement speakers tell how they graduated from this college, share the story of their careers.  “I did this and so can you” is the motivational theme of the speech.

Using the show-and-tell mindset you are bringing whomever you are talking to into the picture you are creating.  You need to be clear in your own  mind what actions you want to flow from your story, what idea or thought process you are trying to change.

In the graphic above, you can imagine that the children pictured are trying to talk mom or dad into paying for them to join a sports team or a dance class.  In the child’s imagination they are going to be a star.  What is it that would make mom and dad open their wallets?

If you can get the person you are talking with to enter into your vision, you need to create a moment of “awe”.  This past month two different billionaries left the atmopshere for a very short time and saw something amazing.  The astronauts say that when you see it you can’t help but be transformed.  The saw the earth from space.  It is called the Overview Effect.  It creates a cognitive shift, something changes when that happens.  An emotional cracking open of yourself, a blast of realization and resonance.

I have felt this moment of “awe” a few times.  The first time was holding my newborn son.  I don’t think that it is possible to explain the shift that happens in that moment.  The transformation that happens when you realize this small tiny baby depends on you for life, and that you would give your life for that child in a heartbeat.  Awe is something that happens in a heartbeat.  A shift that says your world has changed, and it can never be what it was before.

If you can tell your story with “awe”, there is nothing that you can’t do.  Nothing you can’t accomplish.  “Awe” draws those who are listening to your story to see all of its potent possibilities.  All of the paths of the chessboard that you can move in.  It takes you in to Dragonfly Eye thinking.  You are floating through the field and soaking up the knowledge of the universe.  You see the hand of the divine in the story as it unfolds.  You embrace uncertainty as your closest friend.  And curiosity takes you on a new adventure.

Dare To Choose Better

You  might think that when I chose to create this quote and graphic that I was thinking of judging and forgiving others.  It is very true that when you seek to understand others, that judgment goes by the wayside and patience comes in for the struggles that they are having.  However, when I was thinking about what to write about this morning, it was in connection to self judgment.

“Self awareness is not self judgment.  It is looking, and seeing, and discovering who you really are.  So check your judgment at the door.” – Trans4mind

You set goals, dreams, ideas of how your day is going to go.  You are plan your life out.  You will grow up, graduate college, get a job, marry and have a family, climb the corporate ladder, live in a nice home with the white picket fence, and live happy ever after.  And then it happens.  Self sabotage enters into the picture and you do it wrong.  You destroy what you’ve built.  You crush someone else.  Self judgment burns you like a fire that is raging out of control.

Negative self talk enters your head:

• How could you be so stupid?
• Can’t you do anything right?
• You are the worst!
• You’re not good enough!
• You are a fake and a phony!
• Everyone hates you!

“What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgments about these things.” – Epictetus

You are not perfect.  Nobody is.  So you will make mistakes.  Some of those mistakes will be disasters.   Some of life’s disasters happen from things not in your control.  Your mom dies from cancer; your nephew is murdered; your grandson is hit and killed by a delivery truck.  Life just happens.

You can’t go back and change what happened.  But you can in any moment create a new beginning.  Starting over. Let it go.  Done is done.  Stop carrying the emotional baggage of your past.  Take responsibility for your actions.  Rectify whatever can be shifted into a better place.  Then free it from your mind.

As part of your self awareness journey, you have to discover the courage to ask the difficult questions, both of yourself and others.  You need to learn to communicate clearly.  It is one of the hardest lessons.

Sometimes you are so scared of what the other one might say, that you don’t ask the question that you know in your soul needs to be asked.  Or, you lie to yourself that you can make something happen that you know is not really in anyone’s best interest.

Self awareness takes a lot of courage.  It is the only way to avoid the misunderstandings, drama and sadness that happens when we ignore the signs and continue walking down the wrong road.

“We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are, or the way they should be.  And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of those assumptions.” – Stephen Covey

It might be time to start examining all of your assumptions.  Get curious as to what you things in life you think that you understand.  Years ago there was an aquaintance in the church I attended.  Someone had seen her having dinner in a restaurant with a strange man.  When they left the restaurant they were holding hands and the man kissed her goodbye.  That person went around telling everyone that she had a boyfriend.  The gossip took off like a wildfire.  What really happened was that her brother was traveling and stopped off to see her for dinner on his way to another location for business.  The person who saw her made an assumption and they thought what they saw was the right interpretation of facts.  It wasn’t.

How many assumptions about yourself, others, and life itself do you have that could have another interpretation?

I love the writing of Joseph Campbell.  He talks about the cave you fear to enter.  There was a demonstration of this in the original group of Star Wars movies.  When Luke is being taught by Yoda and he enters into the cave.  He asks Yoda what he will find inside and Yoda tells him, only what you take in with you.  Per Joseph Campbell, “The cave you fear to enter has the treasure you seek.”  You need to find your own cave.  Own the fear(s) you have and enter it.  Like Luke you will learn something powerful about yourself.

“Own the fear, find the cave, and write a new ending for yourself, for the people who you’re meant to serve and support, and for your own culture.  Choose courage over comfort.  Choose whole hearts over armor.  And choose the great adventure of being brave and afraid.  At the same exact time.”  – Brene Brown

So set your intention to keep moving forward.

Create the space and intention to remove the armor that keeps you feeling like you’re stuck.  You’re not really stuck.  You just need to check the thinking that created the circumstances you find yourself in.

• Life is messy.
• Life is complicated.
• There will always be something that you’re afraid to face.
• Life has painful moments – show up anyways.
• Life can be awkward – live it anyways.

Silence Is The Space Between The Words, The Inner Sanctuary Of The Heart

When tragedy strikes someone that we love, we all have this tendency to want to fix it. That if we just had the perfect words to say, or the right thing to do, we could make it all better.

But grief is a walk alone.  Others can be there, and listen.  But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, your denial, anger, and bitter loss.  You’ll come to your own peace, hopefully . . . but it will be on your own, in your own time.

– Cathy Lamb

When I was younger they had these commercials for both band-aids and children’s aspirin. In the band-aid commercial the mom puts a band-aid on the little boys scrape, kisses it and he is smiling and his pain is gone. In the baby aspirin the pill magically makes the child feel better. Unfortunately, in real life, we can’t always “kiss it and make it better.”

What we can do is be there with a hug and a listening ear. Let them vent their anger, cry out their sadness, and get a release for the overpowering emotions.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing . . . not healing, not curing . . . that is a friend who cares.

  – Henri Nouwen

When my nephew was killed, my sister was so strong. Making all of the funeral arrangements, who would speak at the service, what songs would be sung, renting the ballroom at the boardwalk – she went all out and was so together. She spoke at the funeral of the over seven years trying to get pregnant because her endometriosis was so bad. How when he was born, the cord was around his neck several times and she had to have an emergency C-section. All the years of loving him, and what he gift he was to her life. She told these stories and not one tear or breakdown. She hugged everyone at the memorial and not one breakdown. I don’t think that I could have done what I saw her do.

Later that night, all of the busyness of the funeral was done, then she broke down. All I could do was hold her. Tell her I loved her. That I was there for her. It was the first time, I couldn’t “kiss it and make it all better.” It has been several years of holding her and loving her, but she has come out the other end of a dark tunnel.

The reality is that you will grieve forever.  You will not “get over” the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.  You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.  You will be whole again but you will never be the same.  Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.

  – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There comes a time when the healing happens. It doesn’t mean that you no longer miss what has been taken from you, just that it no longer controls your life. Each of us handles grief differently. We shouldn’t judge another person by how they handle it or expect them to “be better faster.”

No rule book.  No time frame.  No judgement.  Grief is as individual as a fingerprint.  Do what is right for your soul.

  _ Hw

We can look with fresh eyes at the beauty that still exists in our world. We can walk step by step in the arms of loved ones, knowing that when we stumble in the darkness of grief, they will put the light of hope in our hearts, that things will get easier.

Healing comes when we choose to walk away from darkness and move towards a brighter light.

  – Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Listening to the silence of the night, we can open our hearts and ears to the sounds of the universe. If we just be in the present moment, we can hear beautiful songs we have never heard before. The night insects, like crickets will sing to us. We can hear the night birds, like the owl tells us a story. We can be serenaded by the croaking of the frogs. Never stop listening for the messages from the creator, because these messages will be a balm to our hearts, helping us to heal.

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We Are Stronger Than We Know

GAPs

It is up to us to be a prisoner of our past, by remaining in it; or to be a champion of our future by building it. If your life path was to travel from one of these formations to the next one and so on to the end, how would you do it? You could climb down and walk to the next peak and scale up and repeat over and over again. Or, you could become a bridge builder. Neither way is wrong or right. Just different choices.

We could for sake of argument take opposing viewpoints on the better, faster way to walk this path. We could discuss how those that follow us would make better speed with the bridge. Or how scaling up each peak would define us, and make us stronger. But at the end of the day, the analogy is that each of us has our own path of divine destiny to walk.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” I love this. This is the synopsis my most recent experience of the past year. For many years I knew that in my journey in life, I was having one foot on the gas, and one foot on the brake in accomplishing my goals. The pattern began when I was four years old and I walked in on my mom having sex with a man that was not my father.

What I took from this experience is that it wasn’t safe to be seen. So I spent years of my life trying to be invisible, and it worked. Thus one foot on the brake, and one foot on the gas. Every time my foot on the gas caused me to be close to my goals, I slammed on the brakes and hid. I worked on this and in the past few years thought that I was no longer being invisible.

I had widened my circle of comfort and felt that I had my foot off the brakes. Instead of hiding in crowds I am very social. I speak on stages to hundreds without fear. But the chameleon quality of this life pattern came to my attention this past week. I had been trying very hard to get my website completed, and I realized that I was again driving with one foot on the brake. In the past 6 months I have been the hold up.

I am expanding my comfort zone and that invisible foot was being slammed on the brakes. I was being defeated by a “greater” thing. Many teach that we came into this life to have a certain experience.

Mine seems to be dealing with this pattern of foot on the brakes, when I am pushing hard on the gas to accomplish a goal. Now I recognize it has chameleon like qualities. I know that when I feel like I am not progressing towards my goals, I have to go looking for that sneaky lizard. This life pattern is my GAP – Gods Area of Preparation. This is where I learn about new ways that my life pattern has shifted, and I learn new ways to build bridges to close that gap. Can you see GAPs in your life pattern? Do you see where you need to learn to build bridges to close off the gap to get to your destination?

Your Life is now

Your Life is now. SEIZE IT and make it amazing.
FIND YOUR VOICE.. Believe in Miracles.
Discover your passion and PURSUE IT. Be honest, generous and kind
SURROUND YOURSELF With Love, Laughter and Truth
Let your heart be your guide. INSPIRE someone.
MAKE A DIFFERENCE.. Be a hero to someone.
Live Your Dream. Be Brave and Wild at Heart
Take Chances, ASK QUESTIONS
BE FEARLESS. Go on a Adventure.
Drink the Wild Air. Kiss slowly.
THIS IS YOUR TIME

Future

Sometimes we need to let go of how we thought our life should be. Instead we need to embrace the life that our soul is calling out for. The life we were meant to live.
It is scary. It can feel like we are all alone.
But maybe the journey is all about unbecoming who we are, so that we can become who we are meant to be.

Adventurous Life

A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow. – Richard Bach

Creating Yourself

Experience

What lessons has life been teaching you?

Life

Are we just going through the motions or experiencing what life has to offer?

Tests

Isn’t this the truth, that life tests us with nothing and everything? I was thinking of the time when I was looking for work and putting out feelers and nothing was happening, so of course I was stressing out that I would never find work. Then all at once I get multiple offers, and then I was stressing out on how to decide which one was the best job.

So many things are like this – feast or famine. Like the teeter-totter we are down on the ground or high up in the air = but never evenly balanced. Balance in and of itself seems to be something that we are always chasing after – an elusive butterfly that lands on us for a moment and then flies away.