The Blue Crayon

The Blue Crayon

I’m always looking for metaphors to make the stuff I talk about here more accessible, or easier to implement, or more vivid and memorable. I want to help you, and I want to continue helping me.

The card I pulled today was the “Success” card. Why am I always successful?

Well, on the one hand, it looks like a load of malarkey. I mean, I can see places where I don’t think I’ve been successful. I have feelings about those places.. I can beat myself up pretty well about those places. Then I stop and ask myself, “What if that Creative Question is true?” I have to say, I love that question. On the one hand, it has radically opened my mind. On the other hand, it has often produced some uncomfortable answers. On the third hand, it’s produced some astounding results.

If it is true that I am always successful, why is X still the way it is? It seems to me that it must mean that someway I am striving for what I don’t want, namely X. If I have done everything I can think of to change X and still experience it, then I am doing it on the inside. Unconsciously supporting it for reasons I need to uncover.

The thought that hit me this morning as I was contemplating this Creative Question was this: I can’t color yellow with a blue crayon.

If I am unconsciously committed to X, no matter what I try to do to color yellow, I am holding a blue crayon. I will always be successfully coloring with a blue crayon, regardless of what color my conscious mind thinks I want to use.

Here is a personal example for you that I’ve just uncovered, using Creative Questions. I have been unconsciously deeply committed to being a very healthy, active, fit, fat person. My biometrics are perfect. I run, dance, practice yoga and qigong on a daily basis. I wanted to prove to “Them” that just because a person is very overweight doesn’t automatically mean they aren’t healthy. Defiant a bit? Oh, yeah. Comfortable? Not at all. So, on the one hand, I’ve shed 50 pounds as of this week ounce by grudging ounce over three years; on the other hand, I’ve felt like I have been trying to color yellow with a blue crayon. My fear is, who will I be if I am not that fit, fat person I am so identified as? When I am holding that blue crayon, holding that commitment in my unconscious, nothing I do out here will change that experience.

I’ve now been playing with the Creative Question, “How am I more me when there is less me?” I feel light and happy when I ask it.

My life tells me where my commitments are. My results tell me what I am unconsciously choosing to be successful at. If I have the courage to look with an open mind and a loving heart, I can find where I choose to succeed at things I hate. If I can have the courage and self-love to see clearly, I can find what I need to change. I can change it with Creative Questions, and a lot of practice and patience with myself.
We hear famous people say that there is nothing we can’t do if we set our minds to it. Well, I can’t color yellow with a blue crayon. I can change my thinking so that I can hold the yellow crayon, and get the results I want. I need to know what it is I want, and then make sure my insides are in alignment with my outsides.

How have I changed from feeling like a failure to seeing how my successes show me the way out?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 03022013