Getting onto the Right Path
One of my favorite stories comes from Love, Medicine and Miracles by Dr. Bernie Seigal. A young man wanted to become a violinist. His parents said no, become a lawyer. He went to law school and started practicing law. He then developed what was diagnosed as terminal cancer. Thinking he was going to die, he got a job playing violin for an orchestra. Years later, he was still alive because he realized he was on the wrong path. He had to live his life, not the life of his parents.
Knowing when to walk away is wisdom, being able to do so is courage.
Isn’t it amazing that cancer is what gave him courage enough to walk away? He demonstrated how true the maxim is that every cloud has a silver lining. Can you think of examples when you went through a dark time only to find at the end that it gave you what you had always dreamed and wanted?
Your body knows when you are not living your authentic life, and you will receive a wake-up call.
- It is important, that you listen. That you look within and examine your life.
- It is vital, that you create the courage to make the change.
- It is critical, that you realize that just because you are walking down the right path, doesn’t mean there won’t be obstacles.
- Your need of courage includes being courageous enough to face the fact that you will still make mistakes, experience disappointments and despair.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is perspective, not the truth” – Marcus Aurelius
This is where the ability to both look around you, and within yourself becomes important. It doesn’t mean that you are on the wrong path just because something goes wrong. It just means that you need to grow more, to be able to continue the journey.
In every journey something in your life will become complete. It will have played out its purpose. That road map will no longer lead you in the right direction. You need to wake up to follow a new direction and not just blindly continue down a road that no longer leads you in the right direction.
Every year roads change. New maps are made. If your car has a GPS unit it will need to become updated. The road that used to go through that small town, now bypasses it. Internally your GPS has updated itself and you need to follow a new path.
U-Turns don’t take you all the way back. They just take you back far enough that you can take the turn you missed. Life’s road twists and turns. There are no two directions that are ever the same. So, when you complete a U-turn, it is just like taking a right-hand turn.
You can’t truly go backwards, although it seems like it some days. Trying to, is very disappointing, as you can’t recreate what we left behind. You changed and so did everyone else.
Don’t allow yourself to become the boulder blocking the path. This is what happens when you try to go backwards.
- You block our own path.
- You recreate similar patterns of self-destruction.
If you do, that is when you know that it is time to listen to the heart. Your heart and soul are like the magnetic needle on the compass. Always go to “true north” and you will be on the right path.
I have always maintained that U-turns are part of every journey to some place that I don’t know. I expect them, I laugh when they happen. U-Turns can be really interesting.
What I have learned in my life is that every single experience has something important in it that I needed to learn. I may only understand later, why that piece of knowledge was required.
I have been in the mortgage industry for over 40 years. So I have lived through good and bad cycles in the financial industry. Years ago I had a good job, but the owner of another company kept calling me to come and work for him. Finally after months of getting his phone calls, I gave notice and went to work for him. This job would end up being a U-turn for me.
He had hired a free lance writer to create a manual for the mortgage brokers he worked with, and she seemed unable to finish the project, so as part of my job I took that project to completion.
Then two weeks later I was laid off, when the interest rates hiked up and his business slowed down. I really yelled at myself, because I felt I had made a wrong decision in taking that job. I felt I should have stayed where I was, safe in my comfort zone.
We ended up having to move out of state in order for me to find work. But what happened next, was really interesting.
The Savings and Loan I went to work for needed manuals written for their servicing department, and because I had that experience I got the job of being both an underwriter and a trainer. I created several training programs for them, as well as the servicing manual.
Then I got a second part time job teaching at South Seattle Community College for an adult education class for loan processors and loan officers. I ended up creating new manuals for this position too, because their manuals were so bad. Both of these jobs would not have been available to me, if I hadn’t taken that earlier job and got the experience of creating a manual.
“Move on. It’s just a chapter in your life. Don’t close the book, just turn the page for a new chapter” – Unknown
So you will fall down. You may even get lost. U-Turns are a given. But as long as you take out that compass, listen to your heart, and keep creating the courage in your soul, you will be on the right path. As long as you tune into true north, you can take that step into the unknown, knowing that this is the right path.
What Does The Term, “The sky’s the limit” Mean To You?
What does the term, “the sky’s the limit” mean to you? For me, it is where the comfort zone meets “what else is possible?”
What is stopping you is the unwillingness to live beyond this reality.
– Unknown
It is an extension of “what is possible”, that is beyond what “normal” is for me. It is where all of the magic is, approaching life from that attitude. All our of limitations are self installed. We choose them either by accepting them from someone else, or our own inner critic forming them after a failure. The sky is not the limitation, we are. We see these limitations in our professional life, our personal life and our spiritual life. Some of these limitations come from our culture, through the “roles” we play with our friends and family.
Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness. But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow.
– Unknown
When we go on a hero’s journey, the walls that we have built around us, to limit us, get torn down. When you take any really great story, you find within it what Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey. My two favorite stories are “Star Wars” (the first three with Luke) and “Lord of The Rings”.
The main character (Luke or Frodo) is going through a “normal” or boring life. Nothing much is happening. Then there is a call to adventure (Luke has R2D2 show up and Frodo has Gandalf), something new is introduced into the characters life. This alters the hero’s destiny. At first the hero refuses the call to adventure – this isn’t for me. I can’t get involved. This can sometimes be because the hero knows that the role that you play within your family, or tribe will be forever changed once you cross the threshold.
Our worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.
– Jerry Bridges
Then the hero encounters the mentor – someone who gives advice and gets him ready. It could be someone supernatural, mystical or angelic. The hero crosses the threshold – leaves home and enters into the adventure. There are tests, allies and enemies are encountered in the journey which teach the hero a lot about him or herself. Plan A and possibly Plans B and C fail, as the hero experiences setbacks and has to rethink how to proceed.
Because you are alive, everything is possible.
– Nhat Hanh
The hero has faith which leads them to access higher levels of knowledge and abilities to meet the tests with. The hero sees their limitations and ultimately has to defy and defeat them in order to pull through. The setbacks all lead to the ultimate crisis of life or death, where the hero struggles to complete their destiny (Luke battling the evil emperor and Frodo himself and the ring). Now the hero gets the reward – they have won out over the enemies. Many times the loses are mourned even as the victory is celebrated. The hero begins the journey back home, forever changed by the journey. The old limitations of what the hero thought they were capable of have changed. They have been forever transformed.
The reason people awaken, is because they have finally stopped agreeing to things that insult their soul.
– Unknown
I believe that we all take numerous hero’s journeys. We take them in our personal lives, our professional lives and our spiritual lives. We take small journeys and we take “dark night of the soul” journeys. Each time we need to transform our lives, we take a hero’s journey. We reinvent ourselves, we improvise, adapt and overcome our self made limitations. We get creative, we become flexible and adjust as we experience paradigm shifts.
There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
– Bruce Lee
So don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon. Use your imagination and creativity, to discover that the possibilities of your world are limitless.
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How Does One Become A Butterfly?
A caterpillar must endure a season of isolation before it turns into a butterfly. Embrace the time you have alone, it will only make you stronger.
– Steven Aitchison
Life is a journey of learning and discovery. As young children we take in everything we can learn. We are authentically ourselves. Somewhere along the line of growing up, we learn to hide who we really are. To keep ourselves safe. To avoid ridicule. To be the perfect person, so that we will be loved. We have many reasons why we start hiding. But there comes a time in our life, when we realize that in order to be truly happy, we have to transform back into who we really are. We need to become the person we were created to be.
Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.
– Unknown
Transformation gives you the chance to rewrite the story of who you are and who you are capable of being. There are many things in our life that we give negative meanings to. But what if you gave pain the definition that it shows you that which is not for you? This would be a positive thing to know – what doesn’t belong to me or my life. Envy is another word that has a bad rap. What if envy simply shows you things which you may wish to empower in your life? That would be a great thing to know – things I want in my life and can empower myself to obtain.
To be nobody but yourself is a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight – and never stop fighting.
– E.E. Cummings
The being that is forming in the cocoon is no longer a caterpillar. For the caterpillar the past is truly a place of reference. It can no longer live there, because that body is gone. Within the cocoon the caterpillars body literally melted into goo, and then formed a totally new body. As the butterfly’s body grows into its new shape, it becomes cramped as the wings want to expand out. It isn’t a place of residence for the butterfly, so it has to break loose and spread it’s wings and find a new home. Even though everyone who knew you as a caterpillar is expecting you to still be a caterpillar, you can’t go back. You have to fight to go forward, staying true to who you now are.
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
– Mary Oliver
The butterfly had to break out of the old place of residence and begin a brand new journey, where everything is experienced for the first time. It must break open its heart to begin this journey, because it has to trust its intuition for flying, for finding food, for making a new home. Literally everything for the butterfly is a brand new experience. You have to have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition.
You will know you made the right decision when you pick the hardest and most painful choice but your heart is at peace.
– Unknown
Transformation is a scary business. Because I am a perfectionist, I hate doing something new for the first time. I am doing the best I can with my posts, knowing that I will have spelling errors or grammar mistakes in my writing. I can proofread this a dozen times and the minute I publish I find something I missed. When I sponsor the post, I can’t make any changes, so anything I missed becomes a permanent part of the post. I am living with being imperfect in order to just get the post out there.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
– Steve Jobs
When we listen to our intuition, we are right where we are meant to be. We can impact the people that we share the world with. It may be a tiny corner of the world. Or we could be like a comet and affect the entire world as we fly through the night sky. It isn’t up to us to say how much of an impact we will make. It is up to us to live life as fully as we can. To follow the dreams that have been written in our hearts. To break out of the comfort zone and spread our wings and fly. It doesn’t even matter if we know where we are or where we are going. It only matters that we fly. That we soak up the sun. The we soar with the breezes. And if we can do that, then whatever we leave behind will be sufficient.
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Choose
It really is all about what you choose to see, and I choose to contribute to something bigger than I am and because of that choice, I am doing all of the rest. What is the one line you see here that you choose?
Brand New Opportunity
“Nobody is who they are based upon one decision, one day, one path, one chance, one relationship, or one anything else.
Every day is brand new and opportunity never stops knocking.
Who’s there? The Universe”
Have you ever seen how they make bobbin lace on a little pillow? They wind the bobbins around and over and under and across and this beautiful pattern emerges from the threads.
When I read today’s message from the universe that is what came to my mind. How in our lives we have these experiences that happen and those experiences follow a wide range of ins and outs, overs and unders, and what emerges is the complex pattern that is us.
If we could stand back from the small view that we have of ourselves we would see the beauty that is us. But as humans we tend to get stuck in the story of the experience and let one of more of those experiences define who we are and what we are capable of becoming. We become the limitation of the experience.
If you only focused on a tiny piece of the lace twists and turn, it wouldn’t look like anything special. But if you stand back and take in the complete piece of lace, it is an amazing intricate piece of art.
I was in a deep discussion last night with another women, about an experience that she went through lately with another women. I commented that when I saw the nature of their relationship a year ago, I thought that at some point there would be a breaking of the friendship. It was something in the way the other women would look at her, that told me that she wasn’t coming from a healthy place. Sometimes we can’t see the lesson that is coming our way, not until it actually happens.
We were discussing how if you look in the mirror, who don’t really see yourself for who you are, but if you take a photo of yourself and look at it, then you can see yourself clearly. I asked her if she had looked at any video footage of them because I thought that if she did, she would see that look and now recognize what I was talking about. And she laughed because she had actually saw what I saw.
All of these experiences that teach us vital lessons are part of the fabric of the beautiful work of art that is us. Each decision, each relationship, each thing that happens creates another piece of the pattern. Without those twists and turns we would just be a formless pile of threads.
So don’t get caught up in what should have or what could have happened. Be grateful and thankful for each experience. Each of those twists and turns make you a victorious master of you,, and while sometimes it feels as though you are a pretzel you are an amazing piece of art!
Daily Opportunity
“Nothing is so often irretrievably missed as a daily opportunity.” – Marie Von Ebner Eschenbach
We set intentions and mediatate and pray about what we want to accomplish – and the universe sets it in motion. And throughout the day opportunties come in, but we miss them because we aren’t paying attention or it doesn’t look like we think it should. Our intuition nudges us to take a detour or stop here, and we keep driving. Today start a new habit, that takes the side roads, that checks in to our inner guidance and we will all be amazed at how your life takes off!
Next Opportunity
“Your biggest break can come from never quitting. Being at the right place at the right time can only happen when you keep moving toward the next opportunity.” – Arthur Pine
Opportunity
In the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway lost a suitcase containing all his manuscripts. Telling poet Ezra Pound, Pound called it a stroke of luck. Pound told him that when he rewrote the stories, he would forget the weak parts & only the best material would reappear. Instead of looking at it as a tragedy, Pound reframed it as a opportunity. Hemingway did rewrite the stories & Pound was right. What tragedy can you reframe?