Capitalize on Adversity to Reveal a Vision that Heals You [BirthdayBlog PART 2]

• It’s not about taking others’ advice or continuing to strive for a preconceived notion of “how it should be.”
• It’s about evolving yourself, in part using whatever feels like adversity, which opens you to REAL-ize whatever vision you are actually ready to live. Once you start, then
• It’s about trusting and tweaking as you free-fall into love with what shows up!

I let the pain of having made what looked like a big mistake (double-booking my cottage) shift me almost effortlessly into staying in my beautiful ‘glamping’ accommodation (see last week’s ‘Foot Video’ for more details) instruct and bring me so much joy. Not only was I enamored with whoever conceived of that perfectly functioning little camping toilet (see—you can find love anywhere!), but my enforced stay there led me to the fun and elegant waterfront outdoor sink you see pictured here—just the solution I had been seeking!  (It turns out I am better at doing dishes there than in my own house). And I adored the coziness of having all my other spaces filled with 3 parties who really bonded despite some searing heat that week.  It was a dream I glimpsed YEARS ago with no clue about how it would actually play out. NONE.  In fact, the way it WAS playing out, with me waiting for everyone else to love my dreams as much as I did made me stuck and then sick.

While it is a small and almost silly example, the same kind of shifts and happy outcomes can even happen in what seem like the worst of circumstances, if you truly stay open and question any thought that the future will be bad.  YOU TRULY CAN’T KNOW.  This little example of continuing to use my reaction to adversity to wake me up to what I’m believing is how my clients have been re-building the painful parts of their lives.  It’s how I rebuilt my own health and life and continue to use absolute faith in what unfolds to experience no-matter-what prosperity.

Trusting ‘The Great Whatever’s Happening’ Did Not Come Naturally to Me

Holding onto this house and continuing to build and add and morph and risk….  despite loss of my precious health, which led to the loss of my wonderful job, which all culminated in the dissolution of my marriage… and yet here I am now getting to bring SO many people here where I watch them RELIABLY experience peace, happiness, and love in this nature-filled waterfront retreat that grace has allowed me to create through an ever-increasing free-fall into ‘The Great Whatever’s Happening.”  I am in tears as I write this…. Gratitude oozing from every pore.

It was not easy at first, because I did not KNOW how to question the images of loss that were terrorizing me.  I had such clear plans and visions, and the harder I tried to enforce them, the more they seemed to fall apart–along with me!  After my divorce, I could barely stand to live in this beautiful spot, as my intense love for it and my wish to stay here was always being robbed from me my mind’s bittersweet warning, “Don’t enjoy it too much; you are about to lose it all.”  But diving into The Work then gradually acquiring and applying the efficient Happiness Hacks that worked FOR ME, allowed me to continue to create all this simply by living into what I imagine. AND questioning the veracity of any fearful thinking that would stall the new risks I take almost every day.

YOU, too, can learn the science of re-wiring what keeps you stuck then simply putting one foot in front of the other and live the life you are imagining for myself moment by moment.  SO AWESOME!

What will it take for you to get this kind of freedom?  The investment in yourself pays off in an unimaginable wealth of what wants to sustain you—yet there is a predictable SCIENCE behind how to let it.When you know how to quickly and simply USE the stories that hurt, they show you right where you want to go.

It’s kinda like—but, also very much NOT like—injunctions around the Law of Attraction (where you use your focus on what you don’t want to remind you to shift you into the state you would be in if what you want had already happened). That’s great when it works and you feel the difference in your body, and can go there.

But when you simply don’t believe it and can’t go there, this is where you must finally, once and for all, really, I mean it for peace and freedom–learn to help out the part of you that HONESTLY doesn’t believe it can happen, or feels too scared, angry or victimized to hold a hopeful vision.

Getting out of your Own Way Isn’t Squelching the Negative Thinking… It’s Letting it Find Freedom for Itself

I often say I think affirmations are violent; in other words it is like telling a child to ‘shut up’ when you steamroll over that part of you that is truly believing it’s own fearful visions by saying ‘no, just believe all is well’ (when it can’t just yet). Or to beat yourself up for having those negative thoughts and blame yourself for any bad outcomes or lack that you have come to believe were ’caused’ by your negative thinking. OUCH!

The violence we inflict on our most innocent selves–who are always doing the very best they can given what they have come to believe–begets all other violence. (I’ve worked with a number of folks who were terrified and traumatized by the way they had interpreted the Law of Attraction; they were so fearful that they were creating ‘bad’ outcomes by not being able to correct their doom-and-gloom thinking.  They failed to see their innocence–they simply didn’t know HOW to let go of what they were believing—and turning on themselves in that way was stalling more prosperity, connection, and happiness than the original thoughts!)

We can only do what we can do, but the path to peace and living our dreams grows directly from the compassionate help we give to the misguided programming. That programming is what perpetuates the painful nay-sayer stories that block our own grand unfolding; and they are hard to shake just by wishing them away because they honestly believe they are ‘saving’ us.

Broken down a bit, what ultimately needs to happens —no matter what works for you to access it—as you move from chaos, pain, and paralysis to calm trust and effortless action, looks something like this:

1) Attend to what hurts

2) Allow and use the feeling as a compass or barometer for how aligned you are with what wants to be created

3) Compassionately question the thoughts that were blocking the flow

4) Finally ask yourself what would feel good and watch limitless creativity emerge

5) Enjoy your visions and engage in the action steps to live them (without leaving yourself the minute doubts and hurdles arise), then

6) Keep tweaking the current vision while being the curious observer of what actually unfolds, using reactions/resistance/fear as a sign that the way out is to go back IN.

I’m starting to publish the HAPPINESS HACKS that have changed my life and that show you the shortest distance between what upsets you and your path to peace and going confidently in the direction of your dreams!  (I even have a new baby Happiness Hacks FB GROUP.  If you want mentoring on HOW to get gt these shortcuts to feeling good again, let me know!).

In PART 3 of this special BirthdayBlog, we will go Beyond Just DAMAGE CONTROL into a place where we both get to enjoy our grand visions and be in synch with what shows up, even when they it doesn’t look anything like our plan.

Please reach out if you need help transforming your own pain into a life that fits.