My Trusty Choice

My Trusty Choice

One of the most powerful decisions I have made in my life was the decision to trust. On the one hand, it’s a huge leap from living in fear to living in trust. On the other hand, at our core, it’s how we really are.

I will freely admit that making this choice was a challenge. I will freely admit that it took a lot of regular practice. I will gladly admit that it was so beyond worth it.

Why do I trust? How do I choose trust? What makes me want to trust?

A dear friend uses the phrase, “faith or fear.” I like that. The point is, simply, that fear is a choice.

I know that it doesn’t feel like that. Believe me. I spend years with terror as my emotional underpinning. It was hellish. And I was living in a bad situation, so it was also reasonable. There wasn’t much I could do as a kid, but as an adult, I have choices. One of those choices is to assess my circumstances and make some decisions. If I am in a bad situation, I can choose to change it. If I am not, but going to fear from habit, I can change the habit.

When I live in fear, I am often exhausted. When I live in fear, I don’t feel well much of the time. My muscles hurt, as do my joints. I often have digestive issues. I may be plagued with nightmares and poor sleep in general. I may feel depressed and not even know it. All sorts of stress-related maladies can plague me. I see the world as a grim and wicked place, I see you as something of a menace even if I love you. I believe that this is the way the world is.

Oy.

Choosing trust is, as the saying goes, a leap of faith. It is coming to recognize that the idea of reality being fixed is a mislearning. Nothing is “just the way it is.” Giving up the notion that I am “just the way I am” means that I can let go of the things that hurt me, the behaviors that hold me back, the relationships that eat my soul.

Choosing trust means that I can start taking responsibility for myself. Wow. I can take responsibility for being in my circumstances and so I can start modifying them to bring me deeper into my natural life. I  take responsibility for my happiness, my state of mind, in general, and that gives me the power to choose how I feel, to choose my thoughts, to choose my beliefs.

When I choose trust, I trust that I will find the resources  I need, that the circumstances that come up for me will be useful and bring me a deeper understanding of myself and of you. I discover that this deeper understanding brings peace with it.

When I choose trust, I stop feeling like everything is personal. I understand that you treat me the way you feel about yourself, I remember that you can only see me through your filters, that I can only see you through mine. I remember that filters are not Truth.

When I choose trust, I am choosing my natural life. My natural life is joyful. It is peaceful and playful, creative, productive, and purposeful. My life feels meaningful. Bliss is normal. I see beauty and kindness.

How have I changed from living in fear to choosing to trust?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 10052015

Doubt Into Trust

Doubt Into Trust

When most of us think about trusting we are thinking about trusting other people. We hardly ever think about trusting ourselves.

What happens when we doubt ourselves? For some of us, we doubt our ability to be loved. We have mislearned that we are unlovable, that we are so fatally flawed that no decent person could love us, even if they really do, and we often find ourselves choosing people who treat us poorly, reinforcing our mislearned ideas of being lovable.

For some of us, we doubt our gifts, talents, and skills. Each of us has them but when we doubt them, we often forego opportunities to hone them, to refine and improve them. Perhaps we hide them at home, secretly indulging in our art or music or intellect or cooking or other wonderful things. We avoid taking chances that might make our skills and talents stronger. We fear that we aren’t actually very good at X, or we know we are, but fear not being good enough. Perhaps we fear being mocked or ridiculed. Perhaps we doubt that we have the internal resources we need to handle the attendant stuff, like acclaim, or responsibility, or money, or attention if we were to let our light shine.

Why can I trust? How do I know I can trust me? What makes me choose to believe in my own self?

As I go through my day, I choose to be aware. I choose to notice what I am doing, how I am doing it. I look for ways that I am sabotaging myself. When I spot one, I correct as best I can.

Our personal doubt is our first chunk of mislearning. We all have one; the worst thing we believe about ourselves. Mine is that I am garbage. As I have worked on this one, I have cycled through many Creative Questions. My current faves are, “Why am I strong? Why am I capable? Why am I competent?” Oh, yeah! Working on our personal doubt can bring up all sorts of interesting stuff; damaging beliefs, toxic thoughts, negative behaviors, and other ickies. Trusting ourselves, choosing to believe that we are worth the effort, that we are capable of doing what we need to do, that we can find good teachers to coach us in our endeavors, these are things that make our lives a million times nicer.

As I come to trust myself, I will change. We all change, even when we like to think we don’t. As I come to trust myself, I will make better decisions, ones that support me better. Some of the people in our lives may not like what we are doing, and may choose to leave. Since part of my personal doubt involved feeling like a victim, I am happy to see victimizers leave, even if I grieve the end of the relationship. As we clean up our act, the people whose damage dovetails with ours have to leave or change. Our relationships are like a big mobile; when one piece gets lighter, everything else has to adjust.

One of the benefits of trusting myself more is that my judgment gets better. I find that I am not only trusting me more, but I am trusting the people who want to hurt me less, and the people who want to support me more. I feel safer, I feel more connected, I feel softer, I feel stronger. I am happier. The more I trust me, the more trustworthy I become.

How have I changed from dissing myself to honoring myself with my own trust?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 07122015

Faith and Hope

Faith and Hope

This is another one of those rather controversial topics. That means it’s important, so let’s see what happens when we poke around in the topic of trust.

Why do I trust? How do I know the universe provides? Why am I peaceful?

A lot of us think that faith and hope are the same thing. They really aren’t.

Hope and wishing are pretty close, way closer than hope and faith. With wishing and hoping, we have to be thinking about the situation we want to leave to wish or hope that it will be better.

We say things to ourselves like, “I wish I had more money (than the little money I have now,) I hope I get more money.” “I hope I get better (than the sick that I am, or the addiction, or behavior I want to change) or I hope I get better.” The underlying thoughts are that I am poor or sick or that I am in a bad relationship, for example.

We say things to ourselves like, “I hope I get that job.” But both hoping and wishing kind of stop at the wish. They don’t tend to motivate us; they tend to stop us, like worry, in that hoping so hard, or wishing so hard, or fretting so much feels like we are doing something.

We aren’t.

When I trust, when I have faith, I am believing in something, and believing in me. Trust and faith create an environment where we are supporting our desire with action. The actions may be subtle, we might not notice that we are choosing toward what we trust will happen, but we are.

When we think about that trust as a Creative Question, we are setting our unconscious mind on the task of bringing our goal about. Why do I trust that money comes easily to me? Why do I trust in my own health?

Notice how different you feel between “I hope things work out.” and “I trust things will work out.” and “Why do things go my way?”

These are subtle differences, but the Creative Question is working deep inside, it doesn’t even need an answer to come to the surface to change the underlying beliefs.

Faith and trust lead us to making choices that can move mountains. I can sit around hoping for that new job, or I can trust that I will get it, and that makes me act. Action will bring about more of what we want than wishing, or hoping.

It’s asparagus. We can hope for asparagus when we plant it, and then be sad when we don’t have edible asparagus. We can wish we had asparagus, and then feel kind of despondent when we don’t get it. Or we can have faith that our asparagus patch will produce delicious asparagus, and when it doesn’t the first year, with faith, we may find ourselves talking to friends with asparagus who let us know it takes a few seasons to start producing. So we trust that tending our patch with loving care will make wonderful asparagus in it’s own time.

How have I changed from hoping to having faith?

(c)Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 09282014

Trust Babies

Trust Babies

Have you noticed how much more enjoyable life is when you are feeling present and relaxed? You can let things just happen, and roll with it, finding enjoyment and purpose as you go through your day.

It’s a weird thing. If I don’t have to make things work out, I can slow down inside. I can savor my moments. Time passes at a reasonable rate, and I don’t feel like it flies by. A week takes a week, a month takes a month, and it’s a nice, long wait from birthday to birthday.

If I’m not trying to make things go a certain way, I have more energy to find the fun in what I’m doing, or the satisfaction, or the contentment. I get to the end of my day, and feel gratitude and appreciation for my good day, and when I wake up, I wake up feeling like that, too. It beats the heck out of going to sleep stressed and tense, and waking up the same way. I did that for years.

If I’m not trying to seem smart, or fancy, or fascinating, or just trying to think of how I’m going to respond to what you’re saying, I start listening to you. Really listening. And amazing things happen. I learn stuff from you. I learn more about you. I remember more of what you say. I find that I feel closer to you when I listen to you than when I am all focused on me. And because I heard you, my response is better, we are really having a conversation.

Why do I trust? How do I know the Universe is for my benefit? What makes me relax?

When I stop trying so hard, to please, to fit in, to conform to my ideas of what is normal, I find me. When I stop feeling victimized, angry, scared, confronted, attacked, or beleaguered, and choose to flow with my life as it unfolds, I find that those feelings dissipate, and I am comfortable in my skin, in my thoughts, and behavior. I make choices that suit me better, and if things don’t go the way I think they should have gone, I am free to see how it actually works out for me.

When I choose to trust, I take the pressure off. I lose a lot of my wacky expectations. I love the old saw, “You don’t disappoint me, only my expectations of you disappoint me.” It’s one of the reasons I like to look for emotionally-neutral language to describe interesting circumstances.

Neutral language helps me respond to what’s actually going on rather than to my ideas, or your ideas, of what is going on. Lots of places in the world use emotionally charged language to try to manipulate us into doing stuff. The one I see the most is fear. If I scare you enough, you will buy my stuff, or take my treatment, or shop at my sponsor’s store.

So I avoid the “news” and scary healers and anyone else who seems to have an agenda that uses fear, and make sure I slow down to process and release their stuff if I get hit with it,

And I trust that I can cope.

Why am I capable? Why I am competent? What makes me strong? Why do I trust?

When I take on those Creative Questions, when I claim them for my very own, when I ask myself those questions, I set myself free. When I choose to trust the universe, I set myself free. I am free to connect, to engage, to have bliss, to feel joy, to live my natural life.

How have I changed from second-guessing and gainsaying to trusting and living free?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07072014

Honor and Integrity

Honor and Integrity

I had one of those weeks, you know the kind, where all of a sudden you have a hundred things to do that you’ve never done before. I think it’s very interesting that months can go by without needing to do a new, big something.

So, as usual, I had a lot of choices for how to hit it. On the one end, I could have flipped out and had a fit and refused. On the other end, I could act as if I knew what I was doing, and dive in.

Why am I strong? Why am I competent? Why am I capable?

Outstanding questions. These are the way out of feeling like a victim, but there is another really important part. You know what I’m talking about.

Why do I trust?

Before I tackled each task, I relaxed. I imagined getting all the help I needed. I imagined enjoying the outcome. I relaxed some more and imagined having fun. And then I opened my heart.

How do I feel when I trust?

Now, learning to trust the universe did not come easily for me. I held onto feelings of betrayal and violation like a drowning woman to a jagged piece of flotsam, tearing at me, wounding me over and over. Half the time I couldn’t even remember what the original wound was, but I sure had the feelings.

At the same time, I trusted untrustworthy people all the time. Ow.

As I resolve my old traumas, I have started making better choices, used better judgment, found trustworthy people to trust.

I am getting better at trusting the Universe. I am trusting me, more, too.

When I make crappy decisions that hurt me, I am violating my trust in myself. It makes my relationship with me wobbly. When I feel like I can’t rely on me, when I don’t trust me to take care of me, I start to clench. When I clench, I often start to act out. That makes trouble for me. It makes things uncomfortable for you.

This relationship, the one with myself, is the most important one I have. Trusting me to take care of me, to choose wisely and well, to be kind and respectful to me, leaves me light, and energized, with all the resources I need to take good care of my loved ones.

As soon as I catch myself in that clenched place, I relax my body, relax my emotions, relax my thoughts. I make amends to myself as I can. I use my good questions. The more I practice, the longer between my own betrayals of my trust, the nicer my life gets. It gets easier to remember to unchoose when I am heading down a painful path. When I am behaving honorably to myself, I am living my natural life. Things are easy. Life is rich and full.

How have I changed from betraying my trust in myself to behaving with integrity to me, and to you?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04272014

Why do you like what you find here? What makes it useful? How does this help?

If you like what you find, please + and share. Thanks! Why are you amazing?

Hacking the Outcome

Hacking the Outcome

I’ve been seeing a phrase recently, floating around on the Internet; life hacks. Life hacks are tips and tricks for making life easier.

One of my favorites that I use a lot is imagining how I want something to go. How I want the phone call to go, how I want the meeting to go, how I want the lunch to go.

I used to do something like that in the yore days, but then I tended to imagining bad stuff. Not really worst case, because I have a huge imagination, but stinky case for sure.

Now, when I imaging a phone call going badly as I’m dialing the number, a bunch of stuff happens, and most of it happens in our unconscious mind.

First, when the person answers the phone, I am listening for something bad in their tone of voice; snide, exasperated, snarky, bored, angry; something like that. I was amazed in my NLP (Neurolinguistic Psychology) training at what we can hear in each other’s voices. Mostly that is processed unconsciously. Oh, we are amazing.

Next, I start seeking negative stuff in what they are saying, and respond negatively, and I can blow up a conversation in no time at all.

Why am I competent? What makes me capable? How am I effective? How do I feel when I am light? Why could things go my way?

Since we are grownups, we have grown out of imagining terrible things, and now practice imagining good things. We know things will happen as they do, good or bad, but we can sort for the wonderful rather than the dreadful.

Since we are grownups, we have grown out of saying, “I don’t know what I want,” and actually take the time to notice what we do want. So, when I am anticipating an important call, I can spend some time imaging what the best outcome for me would be.

Since we are grownups, we have grown out of fighting life, and relax into the flow. We know that life includes ups and downs, events will happen that break our hearts, and make our hearts soar. We trust that when the challenging ones happen, we will find all the strength are resources we need, and that those events will bring us, at the very least, more of ourselves, often in ways that may surprise us.

Since we are grownups, we have grown out of thinking we have to fix our lives, and know that we can trust to let our lives unfold. We can use the energy we saved by letting go to enjoy being fulling in the moment, feeling strong and soft, feeling competent, being aware of our experience, being present.

How do I know the outcome? What makes me trust? How do I choose to feel safe?

When I feel safe, I hold myself differently. When I feel happy, I hold myself differently. When I own my power, I hold myself differently. I can change how I feel by holding myself differently. I can change how I feel by biting a pencil longways, not letting my lips touch it, and doing that for a full minutes. It physically mimics a smile, and that releases feel-good neurochemicals into my system.

We may not have a lot of control over what happens in our lives, but we have a lot of control over how we respond to it.

How have let go of expecting rotten to imagining the best outcome?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04092014

How did today's contemplation hit ya? If you liked something here, please + or share. Thank you.

'Tudes

‘Tudes

I pulled the trust card this morning. What a good reminder of a bunch of different things, mostly about attitude.

And isn’t that what it’s all about.

One of the biggest secrets in the world of how to live a good life is right in front of our faces all the time.  Attitude is the lion’s share of how our days go.

When I come to my morning with an attitude of cheerful, peaceful, and present, I have a nicer day than when I come to my morning with an attitude of pissy, entitled, and grim.

Attitude is a complex set of thoughts and feelings that set our filters, that is, what we are looking and listen for out in the world.

Simply put, when I have a good attitude, I find good stuff, when I have a bad attitude, I find bad stuff.

In the olden days, I sorted for bad stuff all the time, from who was doin’ me wrong to how awful the world was. For some reason, then, I seemed to have trust issues.

Back then, I would say with great gloom and certainty, “I know how this is going to play out,” and often that was exactly how it went. I knew that so-and-so would hurt me, that thus-and-such would bomb, and that, while things most likely wouldn’t turn out the worst way, because I had a very good imagination, they certainly wouldn’t turn out the best way.

Little by little, my teacher nudged me to a different attitude. We would imagine things getting better. How they would look, how I might feel. Not great, mind you, just better. A little better. Then a little more.

I imagined that everything was hard. She helped me imagine how things might be if they were easier. She helped me get out of myself enough to start seeing beauty in unlikely places, tiny kindnesses that strangers did for strangers, and solutions to problems. It took me eleven years to trust that she wouldn’t try to hurt me. We celebrated that day.

I expected that the closer I was to you, the worse you were going to get me, when you got around to it, which would be any time now. I was an expert in both anxiety and depression.

Why do I choose to feel safe? How do I feel protected? What makes me choose?

I changed a lot of things with those baby steps. I changed a lot of relationships by changing me. I left a lot of relationships that I couldn’t change. I changed my attitude a bit and a bit and a bit. I found trustworthy people and practiced trusting them. I started to feel safe. I learned how to feel protected.

Attitude will change a lot of things when it comes from our core. If I am pretending things are fine, that’s a horse of a different color. I was stuck in that for years. Pretending things are fine is a coverup. Forcing a good mood can feel awful, but softening into an attitude change can make all the difference.

How have I changed from faking a good attitude to really meaning it?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 03132014

Please remember to share or +. Thanks. 

Honing Trust

Honing Trust

Oo, trust. What a wacky thing that is. There are a bunch of ways that trust works, it’s a thing and an action. We can trust well, or poorly, supportively or destructively.

I can choose whom to trust, with whom to be vulnerable. I can choose to let go of fantasizing that I know the outcome, and choose to assume I will be okay however it works out. I can choose to trust trustworthy people. I can choose to trust my wisdom, and instincts.

I didn’t used to.

I used to brilliantly and consistently trust untrustworthy people. I was in totally denial of my own wisdom, I always knew for sure that things were going to go horribly wrong, and when they didn’t, I knew it would just be worse the next time. “Cheer up, things will get worse” was a phrase I heard a lot, and totally took to heart.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m so glad I was wrong.

How can I choose to feel safe? What makes me protected? Why do I let my life unfold?

As I choose to grow up, I choose to take responsibility for me. That means responding to a lot of stuff. I am responsible for my thoughts. Now, don’t get me wrong, thoughts flow. That’s their nature, and I don’t have a lot of control around what is in that flow as it burbles up from my unconscious mind. But, I do have control of the thoughts I think about. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s profound.

Working that distinction is a skill that meditation affects, that of letting thoughts flow, and letting them go the moment you realize you are thinking them. There are lots of good thoughts to think, and circumstances under which to think them. My whole organism does better when I think positive thoughts, look for the good, and trust.

When I take responsibility for me, I am responsible for my feelings, which are complex blends of thoughts and emotions. If I feel crappy, it’s my responsibility to look at that feeling, dissect it, so to speak, so that I can let it go. I may need to take measures. For example, I used to get really blue every Sunday from about 11 am until about 5 pm. I ran away from it for a long time, by working, but it was still there. When I finally just sat through it a few times, pushing on it a bit, I was able to break it, and now, most of the time I can enjoy a Sunday all the way through.

When I take responsibility for me, I am responsible for my physical well being. That means I feed and water myself with care, clean myself, make sure I give myself some good exercise every day, challenge my mind, and get some decent sleep. It means I take some time to meditate, and contemplate, and practice my Creative Questions. These things take very little time, or a lot, but I get to choose how I do it. Some days I don’t. I am responsible for that, too.

When I take responsibility for me, I begin to find my wisdom. We all have it, deep down somewhere in there. Little by little, we haul it out and give it a test drive. And each time we get it right, we get a little stronger. We start to believe in ourselves, and, as we nurture that, it grows, and grows.

How have I changed from misusing my trust to putting it where it does the most good?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 01272014

Webs of Trust

Webs of Trust

Fragile and powerfully strong, fundamental and elusive. Emanating from tiny creatures to help nourish them, to help them stay connected. No, I’m not talking about spider webbing. I’m talking about trust, and us.

What a weird thing that is. We all need trust as a building block for growing up. Or maybe it’s the mortar. Trust connects us to each other, to our world.

It is a curious phenomenon. When I trust, I am effectively giving you a pointy stick and telling you where it will hurt the most to poke me. If you are trustworthy, you will take the stick, and you won’t poke. Otherwise, ow!

In the dark ages, I got poked a lot. I trusted all the wrong people. I believed that everyone was untrustworthy, like the people I was choosing to trust, who seemed to relish every jab they gave me.

I don’t get jabbed much anymore. Seems like I can tell better who is likely to wield that pointy stick.

Trust is a belief, which is an idea, which is a thought, which we can choose, or unchoose, to think.

As I left the dark ages behind, I changed the way I thought about trust. I started over in a lot of ways, and Creative Questions really helped me focus that by focusing on the result, the outcome, I wanted.

Bad creative questions had been my norm, “Why do people always hurt me? Why don’t things ever go my way? Why do I always get the short end of the stick?”

Now, I could start asking good Creative Questions, “Why do things go my way? What makes me successful? Why am I intimate? Why am I happy?”

By making little shifts in my beliefs, I started making changing the quality of my days. And I started to expect that things would be nice. When I believe my loved ones will be kind to me and support me, instead of believing that they will always, eventually, let me down, I change my behavior. And if they do let me down, it has somehow shifted from a personal poke to just a thing. Although sometimes it may take a bit for me to remember that.

When I started to believe that the Universe is here to support me, that my environment is here to support me, that the whole of my existence is here to support me, everything changed, just a bit, then gradually more and more. I started to look for silver linings, opportunities, lessons for my spiritual growth.

When I remember that you can’t disappoint me, only my expectations of your behavior can disappoint me, I can take responsibility for my feelings about you. If you are constantly not meeting my expectations, I get to change them. If I remember that you can change your behavior, just as I can, I give you a lot more latitude.

How have I changed from putting my trust in stinky bad places, to trusting it is all for my benefit?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01062014

The Universal Self

The Universal Self

This morning I pulled the “Why do I trust?” card. I have been thinking this question, and little variations on it, for the last few days. I love this Creative Question. Especially since the reverse was so familiar to me.

Why do I trust? Why can I trust? How do I know I can trust?

As I grow up, my life gets bigger. As my life gets bigger, I find myself from time to time wondering how I will manage. I can find myself creeping toward overwhelmed, or even toward scared, and then I remember to ask, “Why can I trust? Why can I trust my process? Why do I trust the Universe?”

When I trust, I relax. When I relax, I flow. My thoughts and emotions can flow through my mind. My qi and vitals can flow in my body. My life can flow.

When I trust, I can open my heart. When I open my heart, really nice stuff can come in; love, support, care, the healing of relationships.

When I trust, I can slow down. That means I have time to savor my life, relish my relationships. I have time for work, family, friends, hobbies, activities, spiritual life,  exercise, meals, and sleep. And when I trust, I sleep a whole lot better.

When I trust, I can easily remember to practice all this stuff. I can practice on little challenges, I can practice with somewhat difficult situations, I can practice with minorly difficult people.

And then the miracle happens.

When the big challenge shows up, when the really difficult situations arise, when the super challenging people appear, we can handle it.

We can handle it.

We will manage with grace and poise. We will operate from our perfect self, our core. We will feel peaceful and experience our stillness.We will find compassion, we will find solutions. We will accept help and other’s expertise.

How do I know the Universe provides? What makes me feel protected? How can I choose to feel safe?

The Twelve Steps programs teach us to let go, and to turn things over to our higher power. When we choose to trust, we do this automatically, effortlessly. When we choose to trust, we also choose to refrain from worry and fear. When we choose to trust, we find that, while anger may flare, it moves through quickly and without leaving destruction behind.

When I choose to trust, I no longer need to try to control stuff I can’t, like you, and I find that I take joy in controlling the things I can control, like my thoughts and feelings.

When I choose to trust, I choose freedom. When I choose to trust, I allow my divine and infinite self to emerge. I like that.

How have I changed from being small and mistrustful to opening to the vastness of my Universal self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 12172013