If you’re brave enough to do so, go ahead and “Login” to your life. Check in with yourself. Sit with your most innocent self, and without beating yourself up, ask from your Heart “What’s working and not working in this life right now?”
Take a quick inventory of your level of peace, freedom, happiness, and connection with
- yourself,
- your body and health,
- your time and money,
- your work, contribution, and leisure activities,
- your spirituality and connection to life, and especially
- relationships–your intimate, business, or other partners and your family.
Pull out a piece of paper and do one of two things (or do both—whatever feels good and comes easy to your dear personality!).
- Write down any stories that come up about where you’re at, and where you’d like to be, AND/OR
- Look at the list above and rate on a scale from your level of happiness with the areas above (adding any other areas or specifics that present themselves). Do it in general, and then focus in on your most challenging situations and look at the numbers there.
Take 10 seconds after you’ve done this exercise and notice how you feel about these numbers or these stories of the different parts of your life (and others that may pop into your mind).
Wait….
Breathe…
Notice….
Breathe….
OK!
So how do you feel?
Ecstatic, confident, accomplished, connected, and satisfied?
If not, what is different about this is that I don’t want you to fall into the old trap of beating yourself up. It has never changed anything.
What we do here is truly help out—in fact transform—the part of you that came up with the strategy of self-criticism as a way to save, change, or fix you. The part of you that honestly believes there is a problem with things the way they are in this moment—even after your long spiritual journey.
For today, discard that ‘knife in the stomach’ of regret or self-doubt, and consider TRUST (and its Ok if you’re just not there).
Just pretend for a moment, even, if you can’t trust, that this is EXACTLY where your life needs to be right now. (It’s so much easier once you know what to do with the mismatch—once you can volitionally shift into the helpful, hopeful stance of SEEKING THE SYMMETRY in what still hurts—what feels bad or less-than or just downright uncomfortable and not what you WANT! That’s what we are doing here).
Like most of us have felt at one point in our lives, do you feel:
Frustrated that you don’t have more to show for all your spiritual efforts?
…
Maybe even a little scared as you come face to face with the REALITY that the deepest longing for truth between YOU and YOU still feels a bit misaligned after all the work you’ve done on yourself?
….
Demoralized that you haven’t accomplished some of your most cherished goals and that some of your most critical relationships still bring on intense emotions or unwanted knee-jerk reactions that you are clueless how to shift?
…
If we’re really being honest, you’re perhaps a bit worried about the implications of these ‘ways of being’ on your future, your loved ones, your health, and your level of prosperity.
I know because I was there. To be continued…