Category Archives: Change

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We Are Where We Are Through a Series of Choices

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doors_of_opportunity_400_clr_6555aWe often hear folks talk about how things happen “to them”. But, in reality, we have “asked” for everything that’s shown up in our lives. That’s how the Law of Attraction works. It works the same way whether we’re aware of it or not. We do have the ability to create the life we want. And, in fact, we have created everything in our lives. That’s hard to stomach in many ways because people will inevitably say “I didn’t ask for that illness or injury. How come it happened to me?” You can choose to move, to stand still, to bend and sway or be rigid. You can choose to harbor resentments, anger, hatred or you can choose to embrace love, forgiveness, happiness and joy. I have gotten to the point where I cringe whenever I read/hear the word “hate”. That is such a very strong and powerful word. It indicates how intense your feelings are about whatever it is you’re hating. To me, that’s a very difficult point to get to. I used to use that word a great deal and then I started to pay attention to how it made me feel when I said it. It actually gives me a funny feeling and almost the “shakes”. Once I realized that reaction, I knew that was a sign that it was a very destructive emotion for me. So, I avoid it wherever possible. I also try to examine my soul for feelings of resentment. Resentment, in our opinion, harbors the cells that grow beyond belief and eat the rest of the cells in the body. You can tell that’s a mechanism of action when you hear many people say “that’s really eating me.”  When you continually harbor these bad feelings and thoughts, you stuff them down inside (so they all can fit) and they get bundled up and more resentments are piled on top. This becomes a “mass” and it is not a useful mass. One resentment and bitter feeling feeds on another.

Try to go through your life’s inventory and see if you’re harboring any resentment or bitterness towards anyone or anything. Write down things that bother you. How often do you use words like “hate” or “despise”? Write them down. then ask yourself if they mean what they did when you first developed them? If they have increased in intensity, your “mass” is increasing and you want to make sure you make a conscious choice to improve your feelings.

Think back as far as you can and see if you can identify each individual choice you made that got you were you are today. Play the “what if” game and see what would have happened in your life if things had gone this way or that.

Once you’ve written them all down, see what choices you are currently making but don’t even think about. Then determine if these are choices you want to continue making. If not, decide what you want. I choose health, I choose happiness, I choose peace of mind, etc. Once you’ve made these general choices, you can refine them into specific choices. For example under “I choose health” you might have I choose to stop eating processed foods or something similar (maybe just that you’ll eat out less often – you can start small). Just be aware that you can make a choice and should make a choice to be in control of how you feel and think.

Don’t get angry about this. It’s the way the law works and it’s a good thing too because you DO have control over your own life even if right now you don’t feel that way.  You can choose to feel cruddy about something or you can choose to look at other areas of your life and be grateful.

Terrie

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Where Do I Start?

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square_oneOften I get asked this question – Where do I start?

The first thing I have to ask is “start doing what?” I need to know what you’re after, what your goal is. I can’t tell you how to get to New York if I don’t know a) that you want to go there and b) where you are right now. Sure I could give you general directions to New York City but that would be my determination of where I thought you wanted to go. That’s not what you’re after I’m sure.

So you have to be specific about where you’re headed. Do you know what you want should be the first question. Then you need to know why you want “it”.

Thanks to Michael Hyatt for bringing these questions to my attention. I think they’ll help anyone who is going through any type of uncomfortable “situation” right now. The answers to these questions will help you figure out where you want to go. Sometimes just asking the questions will raise your vibrations and bring you into a much better state. Just as Abraham says – you won’t find the solution as long as you’re focused on the problem. You have to focus on the solution.

The answers we get are often determined by the questions we ask. If we ask bad questions, we will get bad answers. If we ask better questions—empowering questions—we will get better answers.

If you are going through a difficult, uncertain time, here are seven better questions you can ask yourself (and your team which can be defined in any way you want – basically it’s a group of people who are there to book_searching_for_answers_400_clr_12525a support you). You can also just use the questions for any situation you’re in, difficult or not. These questions are great for general life assessment:

  1. What if this isn’t the end but a new beginning? Just asking this question will put you in a better space. It’s always better to think of a beginning than an end. What can you get out of this, what good can come from this situation.
  2. What if the answer to my prayer is just over the next hill? This reminds me of Winston Churchill’s “Don’t ever quit”.  If you stop now, you’ll never know what’s over the hill. What if the hill is just a few hundred feet away and not the miles you think it is. What if it really won’t take the immense amount of effort you think it will? Perception is often said to be reality. You can change your perception of this situation too. You can see that hill as conquerable. You can use the mantra of the ultrarunner – relentless forward motion. Keep on going.
  3. What if this is necessary in order for me to be prepared for the next important chapter in my life? This can be a scary question to answer. But it’s important. When you were ready to start school, you didn’t just start with college did you? You had to build up to that. Similarly, life events teach you about the next step and help you learn to take that step.
  4. What if God (or the Universe if you prefer) knows exactly what I need at this particular time? Again Abraham says that the Universe brings you everything you ask for. But there is the Law of Gestation that I keep talking about. I tell you that if you plant an acorn you can’t dig it up ever day and ask “where’s the oak tree”. But, you also can’t just plant it and keep food and water from it and expect it to grow. There are things that are needed to support that gestation. Same with bringing you what you want. There are steps and the Universe knows what those steps are. Have faith in that.
  5. What does this experience make possible? This is a really important question to ask.  Does it force you to slow down? To re-evaluate your life? To stop spending so much time at work? To spend more time with your family? Does it give you the opportunity and time to write and be creative – to do something you’ve wanted to do for so long? What can you do because of this situation that you were putting off or just “didn’t get to”
  6. What will I be telling my grandchildren that I learned was so valuable in this season of my life? Or if you don’t have grandchildren, what will you write in your memoirs. Another way to look at it is what would you like people to remember about you?

Take these 6 questions and write out the answers. Be serious about it. Date your page (or write in your journal). Write down how you feel and what vibrational state are you in before you start answering the questions. Then take as long as you need to answer them. At the end, record how you feel. Is there a difference? Do you feel as if life is more manageable at this point? What did you learn just from answering the questions? Where do you want to head now?

Use these questions as your starting point. They help with clarity for moving forward instead of staying stuck where you are right now.

Let me know if you enjoy answering the questions.

Terrie

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Are You An Emotional Hoarder?

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Conceptual image of young businessman choosing which face expresIt’s been in the past few years that the TV show “The Hoarders” has aired and become a big hit. I think that when we watch that show, it’s for one of a couple of reasons:

  • To reinforce that we actually are “normal” and we don’t do things like that,
  • To see if the junk we have around us would constitute hoarding to the professionals, and make us feel better if ours is not messy,
  • Just to see how others live – “How could they possibly live like that?” (isn’t this part of the basis for all reality TV shows?)

I’m sure there are many other reasons for watching the show. Some people just want to see people who are messed up in life. I think it makes them feel their lot in life is better than those they are watching and it’s important (unfortunately) that we feel better than someone else – it feeds our self-worth even though it shouldn’t.

But I digress (what else is new).

It’s easy to spot hoarding when it comes to physical items – you can see them. But I would bet that most of you who are reading this are “emotional hoarders”. I can hear you muttering to yourself right now “what the heck are you talking about Terrie?”

Right this minute I ask you to take a few seconds (or it may take you a bit longer) and look around you. What emotions come up when you look at certain things, people, places? What memories do you have right now? What emotions are associated with these memories.

 

Here’s the Mayo Clinic definition of “hoarding”:

Hoarding is the excessive collection of items, along with the inability to discard them. Hoarding often creates such cramped living conditions that homes may be filled to capacity, with only narrow pathways winding through stacks of clutter.

They also go on to say:

People who hoard often don’t see it as a problem, making treatment challenging.

Emotional hoarding involves the excessive collection of emotions but more importantly the second part of the above definition applies here – “The inability to DISCARD them”.  With emotional hoarding your minds become filled to capacity with only narrow pathways through the clutter of your mind. Some people continue to amass their emotions to the point where there is absolutely no movement through the clutter.

Even more with emotional hoarding is the problem of people not seeing that they have a problem. I bet your first response was “no way, you’re full of it Terrie.” But if you’re honest with yourself and examine how much anger, resentment, hurt, bad feelings, jealousy, envy, bitterness, greed, negativity etc are cluttering up your mind, you’ll begin to see at least some of the problem.

This is one reason we put so much emphasis on clearing, whether you use denials, Hoʻoponopono, the Sedona method, EFT or any other clearing method. Identifying and clearing are so vital not only for getting rid of your limiting beliefs but also getting rid of these useless emotions. They really are useless – what good do they serve you?

Resentment is one of the most damaging (physically speaking) emotions there is. Resentment is usually deep seated and when you don’t release it, it can cause a myriad of complaints and problems, including cancer. What happens when you harbor resentment? It eats at you, right? Well, what do you think cancer does? Look at people you know who have had cancer and see if you can spot any resentment in their lives. If you can’t, then ask how well you know them.

We’ll look at this issue more in the upcoming months but I wanted you to start 2014 looking at yourself and the emotions that are swirling around inside of you, taking up space that keeps you from being happy.

Terrie

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Time to Prune Your Tree

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I’m indebted to Cheryl Richardson for this post. It’s so poignant that I couldn’t resist linking to it. In her newsletter this week she talks about pruning her trees and how it’s a great metaphor for what’s going on in her life.

To summarize the three stages to pruning that she talks about:

1) Cut out dead branches

2) Focus on the interior of the tree and remove cross branches (alive but growing sideways)

3) Remove branches that would improve the look of the tree.

cheryl richardson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s left in your life that you no longer need (the dead branches). This goes along with yesterday’s post about the changes made when you relax and allow the transformation to take place inside of you. Sitting back or getting ready to sit back (perhaps you’re waiting til Winter) and re-examining your life and what beliefs, ideas, activities, or anything else there is for you to eliminate from your life. Identifying which branches you want to clear is the first step. You can’t just go on a rampage and just cut branches in a willy nilly manner (you could but that would not be constructive).  So take some time to figure out what is no longer useful in your life. Maybe it’s something you’ve held on to for many years but it’s serving no purpose any more.

Where are your cross branches? These branches are alive but they are interfering with your growth. Sometimes I think we want to have those branches because they are alive and when looked at individually they are “pretty” but they keep us from moving forward. If possible you want to make forward movement, not sideways (although sideways is better than no ways).

And the last step is to get rid of those branches that are alive but are not necessarily adding to the support of your tree and may actually be weighing you down from achieving your real goals.

Read more of Cheryl Richardson’s newsletter.

Thanks Cheryl!

Terrie

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Seasons Change, Caterpillars Change – So Can You

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Fall in a park Happy Fall! Yesterday really did feel like Autumn had arrived. It felt cold when I took Jackie out for a walk.  And then when I went out for my long run, it was absolutely gorgeous. The change really started on Saturday though but we all thought it was cool because we had finally gotten some rain. But it was the subtle beginning of a change.

Things frequently creep up on us and maybe we eventually will notice that there has been a change. Often, the change is so gradual, though, that we don’t pay much attention and just morph into this new aspect of our life similar to the life cycle of the butterfly.

The butterfly starts out as an egg.  That’s not so unusual, right? So do we. But when the egg hatches we’d expect to see a butterfly but we don’t – we get a caterpillar, whose primary function in life is to eat (sometimes I wish I was a caterpillar) and grow. That’s similar to us as an infant and child – we are constantly eating (absorbing tons of information about the world and growing with that knowledge but often absorbing faster than we can grow). The caterpillar also has to shed its skin since the skin doesn’t grow with it. We shed our skin too as we move from one stage of our life and “knowing” to another. As the caterpillar eats it gets bigger. We get bigger and hopefully we grow in proportion to the knowledge we are accruing.

The excitement then begins. The caterpillar goes into a stage called a “pupa” – it looks as if it is resting but inside is where all things are changing. How much does this parallel our development. There are times when it appears nothing is happening with us. We often think monarch-emergingwe should be “doing” more – we think we appear lazy. Our creativity seems to be stopping, we feel as if we aren’t going anywhere. Fatigue might set in and we just want to lounge around, “chill out” as it were. What the heck is happening?

With the caterpillar there is a complete metamorphosis. Caterpillars don’t have wings. During this “pupa” stage of change, organs are completely transformed and new limbs and wings develop where there were none before.  If you give yourself a chance and stop criticizing yourself for doing “nothing”, stop stomping on what’s going on and changing inside, the transformation in you will be remarkable. We often call it a spiritual journey but it’s so much more than that. Your thoughts, ideas, philosophies and even beliefs can change dramatically if we just allow ourselves the time and let the process happen deep within.

Then it’s time to emerge as a butterfly, rest and then spread the wings and fly.  This is an amazing process but it’s a tiny, although miraculous, representation of what happens within ourselves – if we let it.

How can you take the caterpillar within you and transform yourself into what you have always wanted to become? Stop moving in a million directions and stop trying to accomplish dozens of things at one time. Sit back, go within, step away from the activity, relax, take time for yourself. Now that fall is here, spend some time on the porch or patio and enjoy life – it’s very short you know. It’s time that we take each moment and revel in it!

Let the butterfly within you emerge with the new you! Let me know what it’s like.

Terrie