The First Step

The First Step

First steps

The first step… It’s the most exciting and scary moment. It’s the moment when you become aware of the problem… And it’s the moment when you begin to solve it.

Becoming aware of the problem is the beginning of your solution. Awareness is your first step. In simply recognizing the dirt and muck, you’re growing. There are so many who are not even yet willing to look there and recognize it. You, however, are. In seeing it, you’re already working on rising above it. You’re already taking a huge step.

Your unconditional worth can only be discovered when you take this first step. Self-awareness is necessary if you are to expand fully into the world.

It’s an exciting moment each time you find yourself taking this step (again) for the first time. In seeing the problem, you’re entering into a solution about to unfold. It’s the first step in a thrilling adventure into knowing and loving yourself better.

photo credit: Thomas Leth-Olsen

Protecting Your Flow

Protecting Your Flow

Flow

When we feel unsafe, whether we fear being judged, disliked, or misunderstood, it stops our creative flow. Fear is stifling. Alternatively, when we feel safe, our creativity unfolds and reveals itself, without our conscious effort.

Knowing this, we can maximize our creative potential by creating conditions where we feel safe and unrestricted. In protecting our flow, we inspire our creativity. Doing this includes avoiding people who leave us feeling unsafe, and it includes creating support for the ways in which feel fearful in our own psyches. Internal and external, we have the power to create the conditions to support our flow.

Internal and external, whenever we’re up against fear, we have the tools needed to protect our Self. In connecting with our breathe, we know we are safe, we feel our power, and in this experience, we find the courage to fearlessly surrender to our creative potential.

photo credit: Ian Hayhurst

The Heart of Self-Worth

The Heart of Self-Worth

heartworth

“Thoughts become things,” Mike Dooley says. You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you think you deserve.

Life provides your perceived worth, not your actual worth. Only when you connect with your intrinsic goodness — your courage and your kindness — do you allow, and feel you deserve, all of life’s blessings. Only then, can you truly get what you deserve. For only then, do you trust in your unconditional worth.

Unconditional worth belongs to you. It’s always been yours. It’s inherently yours. Your self-worth can not be earned. It can not be measured. It is simply yours to know, and to grow with.

Yet what you think your worth matters just as much as the truth of your infinite value. Feelings need to find balance with perceptions. To truly know your worth and receive it, you need to find alignment with your perceptions and expressions of worth, and your actual worth.

Your thoughts are becoming things, and they’re showing you the truth of your feelings. Life’s giving you what you think you deserve. Are you happy with what you’re creating? Whatever your answer, your worth is yours to grow into, and yours to create the life you truly deserve.

photo credit: eva blue

Getting What You Want Without Knowing What You Need

Getting What You Want Without Knowing What You Need

photo credit: Thomas Brault

In our Modern culture, we are encouraged to be unbalanced in our doing, in our esteem. We’re taught to believe we have the right, and the entitlement, to do and have whatever we want. Yet we lack the love to know what we truly need, and how to get it. And so we find ourselves exerting our power, our esteem towards our Self, onto others, in hopes that we will get what we want, without having to do the work to know what we need.

When did our wants become so important? Perhaps it was when we, as a collective, fulfilled our most basic survival needs. With our drive to survive less pressing, with our most basic needs met, we’ve gotten a bit lost in our purpose. With our physical needs met, we think we’ve been granted free reign to focus on our wants. The truth is though, we have far more needs to fulfill beyond the physical ones. Our work is not over, in fact, it has only begun.

Each of us has been honoured with this lifetime, this unique culture, where we have the abundance to explore beyond our most basic needs and to fulfill ourselves on a deeper level. The wealth of our times affords us this ability. Collectively, we’ve reached this place of abundance and opportunity together. It seems a waste to simply focus on our wants, when we’re being offered the opportunity to explore the richness of our deeper needs. This abundance is a gift, giving us the ability to reach further and farther. Its purpose is to expand us, and to support us in expanding ourselves. We need to use it consciously. For there is not much value in getting what we want when we don’t know what we need.

photo credit: Thomas Brault

It’s Not What Happens, It’s How You Handle It

It’s Not What Happens, It’s How You Handle It

Handle

Life happens… Things you can’t control… People you can’t avoid… Stuff happens just beyond your reach, and it affects you.

I used to think it was my responsibility to control the things that happened in Life. I strived to minimize the bad and to maximize the good. I watched and I stood prepared. I let in only what passed my vigorous tests.

As Life continued, and continued to happen, I began to see the illusion of control I felt I had. Despite my best efforts, I could not manage and shape Life into being exactly as I wanted it to be. I could not make it more convenient for me.

This left me considering, perhaps I’d been misunderstanding my job. Perhaps, it wasn’t my job to control Life. Perhaps instead, it was my job to manage how I handled it. Perhaps, it’s not what’s happening that matters, but rather how I’m handling it.

I can’t stop Life from happening but I can work to know, and trust, I’m handling Life as best I can. In working on this confidence, I receive clarity around what I am truly responsible to in Life — to myself and to you. I must handle you and I, and what happens between us, with care. I must handle Life and all it brings (the good, the bad, and the in-between) with respect, and with honesty.

Handling things as best I can, however, does not necessarily mean you will recognize this. You may not see the truth of my actions and you may not mirror this back to me. You may feel I’m not doing a good enough job handling things. When this is the case, it’s time again for me to practice my confidence, checking in with my Self and determining if I’m handling things as best I can, and if so, continuing to. The truth of my actions will reveal itself.

No matter what comes my way, Life only provides me with what I can handle. In doing my best with these circumstances, I free myself from the chaos of Life’s happenings.

photo credit: Ias