Only you can change your life.
It doesn’t matter who or what you think is the source or cause of any problem you might be experiencing, it all comes back to you and choices you make. And whatever happened, the question is: How do you want to handle it now?
I recall going to a Gestalt therapist in my early 20s and for half an hour or so bewailing all the insufficiencies of my childhood. After I paused for a moment, he said, “And where is that ‘stuff’ now?” And I looked at him, eyes wide open, and spontaneously pointed to my gut and said, “Here.” And he said “Exactly, and that’s where you can heal it.”
It was an epiphany, and an unforgettable moment that has served me well over the years. And, by the way, I had an amazing childhood in retrospect with incredible love and support from both my parents and three amazing brothers who I adored. But somehow when it feels like our lives aren’t working, we tend to look for excuses and explanations. I was an immigrant kid. I had a British accent and was teased. I was smart and saw angels in clouds because I was bored with the curriculum. I was skipped a grade to curtail my habit of talking to angels and make my school life more challenging which led me to be the youngest kid in the class and socially inept. Woe is me! That was my story! To this day I remember that moment with Merv (that Gestalt therapist) and feel huge gratitude to him for helping me to come to my own conclusion about how to move forward in my life.
The next pivotal moment came when Michael and I deliberately and consciously examined our beliefs. Those of you who have done the Abundance Program will recognize this as one of the exercises in the 22 Day Abundance Program. We picked a topic – family, work, money, God, etc. – and while one talked the other recorded everything the other person said. The idea is that if you engage in ‘stream of consciousness’ thinking and writing, you are more likely to discover that you actually have conflicting beliefs. Once you are able to bring the sabotaging beliefs into conscious awareness you can choose what you want to do with them. But the most important thing is recognizing that you have them and being willing to let them go if they are not serving you.
Read More: A Personal Story About the 33 Day Abundance Program
As well as examining your beliefs, beginning to pay attention to how and why you do things can be life-changing. Sometimes we just do something because ‘that’s the way it was always done.’ There is a fun story about a young newlywed who was cooking her first Thanksgiving dinner. She was baking a ham and before she put it in the oven, she cut it in half. Her husband asked why she was cutting it in half. She replied, “That’s the way my Mum does it.” So the curious young man asked his mother-in-law why she cut the ham in half, and got the same reply from her. Now he felt quite determined to understand why the ham was being cut in half, so he went to his wife’s grandmother and asked her. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “I had to cut it in half because my oven was not big enough to cook it all in one piece.” A silly example perhaps, but still worth looking at why we do what we do and if what we are doing is bringing us any closer to happiness, fulfillment, and living the life we want.
Another huge step on my personal journey was connecting with Nature and paying attention to how Mother Nature lives her magnificent life. No wasting energy on regret or opinions simply showing up every day manifesting the best version of herself that is possible in that moment. Aaaaaaaaaaah! We humans can get so caught up in our stories, our melodramas, and our opinions of good and bad and right and wrong, and we forget that in some sense it is just a waste of our precious life energy that could be directed towards “becoming the greatest version of the grandest vision ever we could hold of ourselves” (from Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch).
In order to cultivate what that vision might be for each of us, we need to take the time and space to imagine what is possible. And in fact everything is possible. But if we cannot imagine it, how can we bring it into manifestation? We can’t. And that’s why becoming more aware of our conflicting thoughts and our unexamined behaviours is well worthwhile.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine there are five elements – Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. It is within the Wood element that our life purpose is planted and must unfold in order for us to have a full and satisfying life, and to allow us to fulfill our purpose and maintain health and well-being. I often think that if I had stayed working for the government I would not be alive today to tell the story. And luckily for me, this path of unimaginable fulfillment opened up. Now instead of talking to angels, I talk to plant devas – and more importantly, I listen to what they tell me. But it was not just luck. It was a moment, and in fact many moments, of coming to grips with the idea that I was driving the train of my life.
I wish for you the same incredible magic of being able to fulfill your own dreams. First, you must identify what they are - and to help with that, our Abundance Program Kit has everything you need to begin this deep inner exploration. It will help you reignite the knowledge that you are, in fact, driving the train of your life, and open you up to more happiness, more well-being, more love, and more abundance at every level of your life.
Because remember - only you can make it possible. Only you can transform your life. And the time to start is in this precious present moment.
