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In part one of this series, I talked about awakening to your yearnings and what matters to you as well as authentically knowing and expressing yourself. I also talked about how our programming has disconnected us from our authentic self and often to the degree of sleepwalking or being on auto-pilot.
In part two, I shared my thoughts on being an observer and having compassion for the complexity of filters that often limit our awakening and keeps the programming, recurring breakdowns and similar outcomes in place. I also claimed that you have all you need to create a life you love. I also invited you to be open to the fact that the world may not be exactly the way you see it. In part three, I will share my observations of taking action, clearing the clutter and integrating practices that will support you in your overall well-being as well as increasing your capacity to design and create a life you love. This is my version of Heart-Healthy Conscious Living. Last week I invited you to to practice observing the filters and programming that limit the interpretations of your reality and your possibilities. I encourage you to be gentle with your observations and your practice. Over time, your awareness will get more transparent and will replace the old programming. You will be seeing the world through much different eyes and expanded possibilities. You will also notice you are not as quick to judge, be attached or resist what is being shown to you. Life will seem to slow down and flow. For now, just notice what your tendency is to do with your observations. Pause and breathe often as we move forward. Practice digesting this information and your experience of it, moment by moment. Continue to observe yourself in thought, word and action. Let's spend a little time sorting through what we are learning. In the midst of your observing, you probably noticed some loose ends. For the sake of this conversation those loose ends might best be categorized as, incompletions, old grudges, resentments, unspoken conversations, boundaries not set or unresolved situations. Are you judging those loose ends? Does it bring up anxiety for you as you observe? Are you making yourself wrong about what you are observing? Did you experience glimmers of excitement as new possibilities are emerging and more is available to you? Notice if you can, how your mood shifts as you step out of the limited beliefs and paradigms into new possibilities and greater potential. Keeping all of that in the background, let's say that everything is energy or that everything has a certain energy associated with it. Given that, consider that anything left undone carries with it a certain amount of weight and space that will manifest negatively or heavily in your thoughts, emotions, feelings and body. This energy has to go somewhere and when you refuse to let it go, or don't take action on it, that energy finds a place to live. It usually shows up in the body as stress, dis-ease, anxiety, confusion, fear, worry, overwhelm and the list goes on. Does that sound familiar? What would be available to you on the other side of choosing to take action on those things that are currently draining your energy or keeping you stuck? Would you have more peace, fulfillment, joy, love, intimacy, courage, connection? What are the costs of avoiding conversations and not taking action on what is limiting you from experiencing what is important to you? You may have already felt your energy depleted or compromised from the awareness of these loose ends. The energy it takes to carry that around day to day adds another layer of limitations on your already limiting interpretations, stories, judgments, beliefs, moods, attachments, concerns, righteous positions and ego. In other words you might say incompletions, loose ends and non action keep the old programming anchored in place. Not only is the programming and blueprint for repeated action in place, we have projected all of it into the future and have created additional layers of "things will never change, why bother, I am helpless here". Once again, we settle for a life of mediocrity and status quo. Time to be honest, where did you settle in life? Is your current life anything like you thought it would be? Are you ready to take responsibility to take the necessary actions to get in alignment with your integrity and what matters to you. Your old programming has created walls, masks and layers of what seemed like protection, safety and security along the way. I am going to claim that in actuality your programming has put in place a blueprint of resistance to letting go and an avoidance of taking responsibility for these incompletions, loose ends or energy drains. For all practical purposes and what we think is logical at the time, we continue to make choices that further take us away from the relationship with ourselves and what matters to us. That is no longer working. All of this unexpressed, unprocessed energy becomes a ticking time bomb in your health and well-being. I am going to suggest you are still making emotional choices rooted in the past as you gather more loose ends to validate your experience, beliefs and results. Hence, the chaos and clutter that you experience in your life. This is an example of how the experience of your inner world can shape how you see your outer world. Can you see how all of that limits your capacity to move forward? Let's see if we can shift that. This is the week we bust through the limitations and reclaim our potential and possibilities. You can do something about every situation you currently see as limiting. Keep in mind that some of what was previously weighing you down will suddenly go away when you are open to a new perspective and a new action. Letting go of the hold all of this has had on you will allow an abundance of energy to emerge and it will create a heightened sense of well-being. Isn't that interesting? I invite you to look at anything that you are currently suffering about as a sign of something that you are holding on, not letting go of or not surrendering to. That suffering is pointing you to what is next for you to clean up or clear up. It is your call to action. There is wisdom and healing in being able to observe that. One action step in moving forward is to take some time to put it all down on paper and get it out of your head. That simple act will allow you to see everything that is taking up space and energy in your thoughts, words and actions. Make a list of your loose ends and incompletions. That could be everything that is keeping you away from experiencing a life you love or taking up time & energy from you doing what really matters to you. In other words, what are the loose ends or people that keep you separated or disconnected with what matters in your heart? What actions or lack of actions have you continue to sacrifice the relationship with yourself and what matters to you? What actions or lack of actions have contributed to your life being more about your outer world than your inner world? In other words are you hunting, searching, reaching and grabbing for a false sense of security by seeking approval & attention, trying to fit in or trying to belong. How much of your energy is taken up with people pleasing, avoiding conflict & love tests? It might be time to take off the masks that you wear to juggle that false sense of security and finally be authentic. Who do you really want to become? What qualities would you need to practice to become that person? What kind of a person would you become as a result of your authenticity? Is the image of the person you can become and the increased well-being you will experience as a result of taking action inspiring enough to have you tie up loose ends? When you add new learning and new actions, you will get new results. So, this is the week to get into ACTION. This week is about conscious choice. Choice is action. Even not choosing is choosing. Ask yourself if your current choices are taking you further away from living a life you love. Are you making choices that temporarily take you out of the anxiety, stress and overwhelm or are you making choices that are in alignment with what matters to you? Unconscious choices usually make sense at the time. Down the road, we find out it was a temporary solution to a permanent problem. You can stop the crazy making. Choose again. You have heard the saying that insanity is doing the same things over and over yet expecting results. Well, that's one way to look at it. I say that is the difference between a Fantasy and a Reality. Fantasy is always just out of reach. It is a distant yet not likely possibility. We imagine a life when everything is just the way we are attached to it being. A life where other people and situations line up with our picture of what the universe is supposed to look like. We delay and put on hold our peace, fulfillment and potential. We feed ourselves excuses and reasons why we can't have what we want. We quietly suffer the victim mentality and live in an interpretation that the world and everyone in it is getting what they want and our turn never comes. So, we settle into occasional daydreams of being in a far away place. We may even imagine a life when all the conditions will be right for us to put ourselves first sometime in the future. And day by day, year by year, decade by decade, nothing new happens. Imagine that! WAKE UP!!!! You are sleepwalking again. If you really want that future you imagine, then the only way it will happen is if you do something about it. Reality is taking action on what you say is important to you. All success, growth, transition, change and evolvement involves the risk of disapproval and disappointment. If you are looking or waiting for a comfortable, convenient and sure thing, sorry to be the bearer of bad news. IT AIN'T OUT THERE! Make today the day you begin the practice of trusting yourself to handle whatever comes up as you design and create a life you love. Join me in creating a life you love in 2015! Be watching your email inbox for last part of this message. YOU HAVE THE POWER to reinvent yourself moment by moment. ARE YOU READY to experience how good it could really be - TO BE YOU?
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In part one of this series, I talked about awakening to your yearnings and what matters to you as well as authentically knowing and expressing yourself. I also talked about how our programming has disconnected us from our authentic self and often to the degree of sleepwalking or being on auto-pilot.
In part two, I want to share my thoughts on being an observer and having compassion for the complexity of filters that often limit our awakening and keeps the programming, recurring breakdowns and similar outcomes in place. I also want to claim that you have all you need to create a life you love. Be open to the fact that the world may not be exactly the way you see it. Being an observer is stepping back and watching yourself in motion. It is being open to being shown the many ways you may have sabotaged your capacity to listen to your heart and take authentic actions. Being deliberate and intentional as an observer will allow you to see the habits and patterns that you have taken on over the years that may or may not be currently working for you. Being an observer is not a time to make yourself wrong or go into some negative internal dialog. It is pausing to observe your thoughts, words and actions and being open to insight and information about how you make choices and the results those choices produce. Acknowledging what you have been up and where you are as a result of your prior choices is crucial when it comes to enhancing your capacity to design and create a life you love. Bringing intention and purpose to your choices instead of being swept along in a state of sleepwalking or auto-pilot will likely shift the outcomes and results of your actions and lack of actions. Hence, transformation can occur and you have increased your capacity for action and experience. In other words, you are living a more authentic life that is in alignment with what matters to you. You might also say you are living in integrity. Some of what you will observe are the filters through which you interpret the world. Those filters disclose your personal and private reality. That reality exists as a result of the programming I spoke of last week. I will add here that your reality is merely your interpretation. It is not necessarily the same reality that exists for someone else. Hence, the very reason that we as humans continue to be in conflict when we are insistent on being right about our personal and private reality. We assume everyone sees situations the way we do. Nothing could be further from the truth. Can you identify a righteous position that is currently limiting your connection with someone? Let's look a little deeper. When you look to the outer world, it is common to place blame and assign judgment to what you see out there. Yet, what you see is merely a filtered reflection of how you have been programmed. Your inner world is now a sea of emotional attachments and fears all the while trying to make sense of your personal and private reality. Some filters show up as your interpretations, stories, judgments, beliefs, moods, attachments, concerns, ego, etc. It isn't the event that has us suffer. It is what we make the event mean that creates the suffering. Or better yet, what we make it mean about us. The more you are unwilling to look at your blueprint for suffering, the longer you will stay stuck. Change the story and you change your capacity to handle whatever comes up. I know, easier said than done. This is going on inside each of us at all times. Can you see how complex all of this is at any given moment? This is the time for compassion and acceptance for your humanness. There is a way to reduce the filters while moving towards a more authentic connection to yourself and others. That however, will take practice, time, courage, rigor and patience. In my opinion, there is no better time than the present moment to choose to take responsibility for your reality and the condition of your current life situations. As a matter of fact, why wouldn't you want to take responsibility? Who doesn't want to be the captain of their own ship? What's the pay off in letting someone else dictate your actions or lack of actions? Taking responsibility says you matter and what you want in life matters. When you are willing to stop putting your life on hold and quit blaming others for the condition of your life, you automatically and immediately begin to make choices from a stance of power, potential and possibilities. Your peace, power, potential, possibilities and security do not exist in playing it safe or playing a small game. It does not exist in not taking risks or waiting for guarantees of false security. It does not exist in having to know, having to look good or having to feel good. Those are all methods and means of looking to the outer world for security in your inner world. That, my dear friend is the programmed formula for guaranteed and permanent suffering! The lasting shift to unravel the programming is to take the inside out approach. Join me in creating a life you love in 2015! Be watching your email inbox for last two parts of this message. YOU HAVE THE POWER to reinvent yourself moment by moment. ARE YOU READY to experience how good it could really be - TO BE YOU? When was the last time you really listened to your heart and what was important to you? If you could hear what your heart was truly saying, what would it tell you? What is wanting to awaken in your heart? What have you been putting on hold? What are you yearning to experience or express? Have you ever asked yourself those questions?
It would be safe to say that for the most part, our natural evolution from infant to adult has brought about a certain degree of programmed and hard-wired responses that has gotten us to this point in our lives. In a lot of ways, we have been surviving, not thriving. We have been in somewhat of a tribal comfort zone staying just within range of keeping the status quo, people pleasing, avoiding conflict and not standing out too much. After all, at one time or another, our survival depended on it. We learned the game and we played it well. We have been on auto-pilot or sleepwalking when it comes to awakening to our individual and deepest yearnings and matters of the heart. When asked what we want in life we are often speechless. We don't have much of a capacity to articulate our deepest longings. We were not trained, given permission or asked to authentically express our heart and soul's desire as we grew up. Along the way our dreams and goals got stuffed and hidden deep inside. When we were no longer being held back by others, we began to stuff, limit and hide our potential from ourselves. We then learned the game of self-sabotage. We joke, make excuses and justify why we are not living a fully engaged, fully expressed or fully realized life. We pretend it doesn't matter which is really saying we don't matter. You have probably even heard a little voice saying, "who do you think you are"? I am going to suggest that your programming has created suffering and discontent along the way. You know what they say, "Be careful what you practice, you will get good at it". Most of the situations you find yourself in today are because of the blueprints created from that programming. You didn't really choose it, you just keep finding yourself back in the same place, further and further away from what really matters to you. That experience of separation from your authentic self takes its toll emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, financially and intellectually. It doesn't have to be this way. You can learn to intervene on the programming and open your heart to the depth, life force and vitality it was meant to experience. If you are truly ready to experience a life you love then it will require you to learn to listen to your heart and the wisdom it holds for you. Are you ready to take responsibility to getting in alignment with what really matters to you and creating a life you love? Or, have you settled for a life of mediocrity, lack of fulfillment and self-sabotage? It is not a matter of if you are out of integrity, it is a matter of where your thoughts, words and actions are out of alignment with what really matters to you. It is time to awaken to the fact that you matter and what you want to experience and express matters. Creating a life you love is an 18" journey from your head to your heart. This is an inside job. The innovative work of awakening the authentic expression of who you know yourself to be is rich with distinctions, insight, understanding, compassion. acceptance and awareness. It will make the invisible, visible. It will bring light, awareness, acceptance and compassion to what has us as human beings suffer with and through our experiences and perceived lack and limitations. Be watching your email inbox for the next three parts of this message. YOU HAVE THE POWER to reinvent yourself moment by moment. ARE YOU READY to experience how good it could really be - TO BE YOU? 
It's a new year, a new day, a new opportunity to choose.
Research shows that it takes 66 days to build a habit. What we also know is that your life as you know it today was built by habit. Your thoughts, words and actions have been programmed and repeated time after time. Living those consistently over time has created the habits of doing or not doing. If you have the results you want in life then awesome! However, if you don't it will only take 66 days to turn a habit that is not working into one that will. Now keep in mind, the moment you choose to start, you will begin to see results, even day 1. Be open to observing the changes inside and out. After 66 days the new habit is more automatic but along the way, you are experiencing yourself in a different way. If you have ever wanted more confidence, courage, self-trust, self-esteem, influence, productivity, effectiveness, connection, power, joy, happiness and peace, it all starts with a CHOICE to be your best self. You are probably asking HOW DO I DO THIS? Get clear you are in a new moment in time. What worked in the past may not work now or in the future for your desired results. Be willing to UPDATE the thoughts, words and actions that allow you to live a life you love. The past does not define the future. Your current thoughts, words and actions will. You are only as limited as you allow yourself to be. Start SMALL! Consistent action over time will create the momentum that will create the desired results. It will be easier to adjust your actions if you are purposeful and intentional with doing the right thing to create a new habit versus just any old thing to get through the day. Start NOW! Interrupt the limiting belief that it's not a good time or that something else is more important. Your capacity to handle everything that you have made more important than you will be enhanced when you are being your best self. Trust yourself to figure it out step by step. That means the actions, support, information, scheduling, organizing, learning, etc. to be your best self. Acknowledge & Celebrate the steps you are taking to become your best self daily. It is one choice at a time! You never know who is counting on you to be the leader in your own life so they can step up and do the same. You matter and what you bring to the world matters! |
Categories© 2009 Empowering Potential LLC.
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