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Finding Her

Do you remember her?

I know you do, because you feel her missing. That is your loss. The ache that tells you that something is amiss, that things are not where they are supposed to be. That you are not who you are supposed to be. The seed of unease that makes you fluctuate between frustrated anger and nervous anxiety. The seed that sows doubt and destroys your confidence. The seed that keeps you seeking for more outside of you because you never feel enough within you. The seed that compels you to follow the path to finding her. 

I know you remember her, because you miss her. Your every struggle in life is because you feel her missing.

You are frustrated with your inability to move forward, like there is something holding you back. You don’t know how to move forward and you don’t know how or where to begin in finding her.

It feels like there is a huge mountain range before you and while you want to traverse that mountain range and find what is on the other side, you keep telling yourself it’s too big, it’s too hard, it’s not safe. You tell yourself you don’t know what’s on the other side. But you do know. You can feel it deep within and that is why it keeps calling to you. That is why you feel so uncomfortable every day. Because you have this nagging deep calling to go to the other side of that mountain and find her.

You know she is there.

You hear her calling to you and you want to go there. You desperately miss her, you long for her. The girl you once were. The woman you once were.

She is waiting for you on the other side of that mountain and she believes in you. She doesn’t blame you for forgetting her. She has been with you through it all. She knows your pain. She knows your struggle. She knows your fear.

She understands why you have avoided visiting that mountain that lies between you and her, distracting yourself with the busyness of your life. It is all so busy and such a welcome distraction. Because you don’t want to go there. You are scared to look at that mountain made up of your memories, your thoughts, your emotions, your pain, your struggle, your anguish.

What if it all comes back?

What if I fall apart again?

What if it hurts?

You think in avoiding it and pretending it is not there that it doesn’t impact on you. The more you ignore it, the more power it has over you.

The shadow of the mountain is diming your light and you don’t even know it.

You have become use to living your life in this way. You have become accustomed to the darkness, the emptiness, the fear, the pain, the struggle. You have forgotten that it can be different. While you continue to choose to avoid looking at the mountain, your pain, then its shadow will keep you trapped in your life and who you are.

Your true freedom can only come when you decide that you don’t want to struggle anymore, that you don’t want to stay in the shadow of your past. Your life will change when you choose to be the creator of change and step forward with courage to face that mountain, knowing that your true self resides on the other side, beckoning you to come. She compels you to join her in light and fulfilment; peace and joy and ease.

The first step is often the hardest, and yet it is always the most powerful. When you say ‘yes I am ready to change’ and ‘I am ready to look beyond what I have been told my life is and can be’, when you decide that you no longer want to live in the struggle that you have found yourself trapped, then you can start your journey in finding her.

She resides within you. She always has.

For you are whole, there is nothing missing from inside you. You are already complete, you always have been. And as you own your story and look within the layers of your past and honour the pain and struggle that have kept you separate from her, from your wholeness, you will progressively unravel the layers and open the door to her.

As you invite her back into your life, you will remember that she is all contained within one body, one energy, one soul. She is all that you are and is all that you could ever need.

Your pain is her pain.

Your struggle is her struggle.

Your anguish is her anguish.

And she will hold you and guide you along the path back to her. And as you reconnect to her, see the glimpses of her emerging into your life, your desire to be her will become stronger than your fear of changing. And as you release the resistance to change, you will unlock a deep power within that will bring you back to her, and allow your life to transform to all that you could possibly desire it to be. As you progressively unravel your emotional baggage, you uncover the freedom lying within your body, mind and spirit and reconnect you to the beauty of your soul.

She is ready for you. She is waiting for you.

In losing you, you open yourself to finding her. 

She is powerful. She is beautiful. She is magnificent.

She is you.

Image by: Mickael Gresset, Unsplash

Joyfully Living: The Forgotten Art of Creating Joy

Have you lost the art of living joyfully?

Last weekend I found myself living joyfully in the most beautiful of ways and it was exhilarating.

It involved me, a dancefloor, some good old school tunes and my 61 year old Down Syndrome aunty. My sister and brother-in-law had a ‘Let’s Celebrate Life’ party, which saw family and friends come together to share and celebrate life.

As the evening proceeded and the music kicked in, my aunty, whose mobility isn’t so great, grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the dancefloor. What ensued for the next hour or so was pure joy. We moved, we grooved, we spun, we put our hands in the air like we just didn’t care – it was beyond daggy dancing and was all dancing like no one was watching.

The exhilaration in my aunty’s eyes as we cut up that dance floor, brings tears to my eyes now. She was so alive for that hour, more than I have ever seen her. She had recaptured the art of living joyfully. And even when she would stop every 15 minutes or so, and sit down to have a drink of water, I’d think she’s done, she’s got nothing left yet 20 seconds later, fully rested and replenished, she would slap her hand on the table and say ‘let’s go’.

And off we would go again.

I honestly have not felt joy like that, watching her and sharing in the joy of this experience, for quite a while.

Living Joyfully, right here!

The day to day seems to get in the way of experiencing true joy.

Sure I’m not stuck in the depths of depression, far from it, and I absolutely feel happiness every day. I am happy. But happy is not joy.

Oh no, joy is something quite different.

I was working with a client last week, and we were exploring joy in his life. He said he didn’t really know what joy was, and he is not alone in this, many people don’t know what joy is and what it feels like to experience joy. As we discussed the difference between happiness and joy, the words ‘contentment with a charge’ came to me.

And I adore that definition of joy.

When you combine a deep level of inner peace with a surge of ecstasy you experience joy. It is when you feel content that all is well in the world, so you allow yourself to let go and be in the moment and in so doing your heart space opens and you feel a charge of elating energy fill you.

That is joy.

And that surge of blissful energy that fills you, is the energy of love.

Joy’s source is love.

We all have joy within us, because at our core we have this well of love waiting for us to open to it. Yet, so many of us have blocked the path to joy. We close our heart space, suppressing that pool of love waiting to float through us and stop ourselves from experiencing and attracting joy.

Why would we do this, when it feels so good to be in this space?

Sadly we have been conditioned out of experiencing joy. We may not have seen it from our parents, or when we were experiencing joy as a child it got shut down. Sometimes, there are deep belief programs around not feeling worthy of joy or not deserving joy. Couple that with a modern day life, where just getting through the day often feels like a struggle for most people, and there simply isn’t room for joy.

And that has to change.

Because we all deserve to experience joy. And the more we feel joyful the most amazing impact we have on others. Because when you are in joy, you cannot feel anger, resentment, frustration, exhausted – all those emotions that we have become so familiar with. When we allow the joy to flow through us, our hearts are opened and we are allowing love to direct our life.

Put Your Hands in the Air Like You Just Don’t Care

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live joyfully everyday?

It is possible, essential even!

So here’s how you can recapture joy in your life and keep it flowing.

Place your hands on your heart space and breathe deeply.

Now think about five things you are feeling grateful for in this moment.

As you feel gratitude for your life, your heart space opens.

Now ask yourself ‘what brings me joy?’ and listen for the answer that you intuitively receive.

This is your truth.

This is what you need to start doing more of.

Now write a list of five things that truly bring you joy.

Make a commitment to yourself to do one of these things every day.

And the more you remember how to be in joy in life, the more you are going to enjoy life.

When you feel true joy, like I did last weekend dancing with my aunty, you remember how wonderful it feels and like a drug, you want more.

It is yours to take!

Because it is yours to create. 

Are you ready to start living joyfully again?

The Truth About Growth: It Takes Practice

The concept of personal growth can be very appealing, but there are some truths about growth that need to be understood before embarking on your journey of transformation. Peeling back the layers can not only be painful it can be exhausting. As each layer is removed, a new version of the SELF is birthed. A new SELF that must be nurtured, that must be discovered, that must be settled, that must learn how to BE in the world.

And all of that takes time, patience, practice and a whole load of courage. Because when the going gets tough, it is ever so easy to step back into the way things were.

The old you, remember her?

The one you no longer wanted to be.

Those old habits, those old thoughts, those old beliefs, those old feelings – all those which you have completely outgrown, yet bizarrely feel comfortable due to their familiarity.

And so you settle back into the old version of your SELF because it is easier – you know how to do it and even if it is painful and an endless struggle, who know it and for that reason it is the easy option – the well-worn path.

And finding your way on that new path, the one that you have desperately desired and worked so hard to reach, is exhausting!

It is all new and new can be scary – there is fear in the unknown.

Oh, but there is excitement in the unknown of growth too.

There is possibility.

There is adventure.

There is discovery.

There is hope.

Yet, your old SELF is like an old pair of shoes, you know she can do the job, there is no unknown, so it is safe, and……. just a whole lot of more of the same. The same which you became tired of. The same you outgrew. The same that you desperately tried to escape from.

But it is so easy to go back!

And that is the merry dance that many do as they grow, as they evolve, as they change, as they take new paths.

And so you dance, sending yourself slightly crazy, with your inner being fighting with itself.

So how do you stop the dancing?

The uncertainty?

The confusion?

The inner critic slamming you for not staying put?

The fear constantly luring you back into the ‘safety’ of your old life?

How do you step into this new version of SELF wholly and completely and hold your SELF in this new space, in your truth, as the new version of you, in the new life that you have created?

It is simple really: You Practice It!

And then you practice it again.

And then you practice it again!

The key to growth is practice.

And you do not stop until it is so ingrained in you, that you cannot NOT be this new version of you.

Just as a baby learning to walk takes that first step and falls before getting up and falling again and getting up and falling again….so she practices until she cannot imagine not being able to walk – in fact she cannot understand how she never could, so easy and familiar it has become.

Just as the young child learns to read, she must practice and practice, each letter becoming familiar, each sound becoming familiar, each word becoming familiar, until they all just fall into place and words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, paragraphs form chapters and chapters form books. And before she knows it she is devouring big thick delightful books and she cannot imagine how she could never have been able to read, so easy and familiar it has become.

And that is why you must practice BEING in this new version of your SELF, because it must be learnt, like any new skill – you must learn how to BE her.

Energetically, you are operating from a different vibration and you have to get use to how that feels. It is like moving from being a 60W light bulb to a 240W light bulb, it feels different, it looks different, it impacts differently on the world around it – and it takes time to get used to being at this new vibration. It takes time for the energy fields to integrate, like the neural pathways being laid as a baby learns to walk or a child learns to read, our new energetic body is being laid and solidified. New emotions and thoughts which create new beliefs and evolve into a whole new mindset.

All of this takes time and space and practice. Transformation without integration is a recipe for disaster, which I recently wrote about.

There will be teething problems just like anything in its infancy.

There will be wobbles. And those wobbles may even turn into a fall, right back into the old you.

But wobbles are an expected part of growth.

In fact, wobbles are a gift, because if you don’t wobble then you don’t learn. Every time you wobble there is an opportunity to learn.

Showing yourself compassion when you wobble, rather than criticism and judgement of yourself as a failure, enables you to discover where the wobble is coming from.

Gently asking yourself why you are struggling, why you are anxious, why you want to give up – allows you to see deeper within yourself and with this understanding you are able to address where these issues are coming from, rather than sweeping them under the rug, where inevitably they will present themselves at some time down the track.

When you wobble you learn.

And when you learn you adjust your path slightly, amending that which was not fitting right within you, that which was getting in the way of your flow in this space. And then you can step forward again, more assured of your path and more assured of your SELF on this path.

Sure you can believe that growing is not always easy, that it is not a walk in the park to smell the roses. But it certainly can become a walk in the park to smell those roses, if you do your work, give yourself the time and space to integrate and practice and learn how it is to BE this new version of you, the person you have grown into, the person you have desired to become.

Do not give up on her, you have come too far already in your growth to go back.

And if you go back, I guarantee you will soon be looking to jump out of that space again, because you have outgrown it and you are not meant to be there anymore.

Believe in yourself and do your work – everyday. And maybe, just maybe, you might find that this whole growing and evolving thing, this thing called Life, may actually turn out to be a little fun after all.

Have fun with your growth and exploring who it is you are to become!