SunAgape's Spot

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Right as Rain

You know, I’m right. You are, too. We are all right from our own point of view, and when we get that, boyoboy can we let go of stuff.

When we feel right, we feel good. When we feel like we have to prove we are right, we clench up. That doesn’t feel good, although, it may feel familiar.

Why am I right? What makes me choose? How do I have opinions?

Often, when we aren’t feeling confident in our opinion, or in ourselves, we get more and more shrill about being right. We may try to pound our opinion into each other, sometimes we get so churned up we will really hurt each other in the name of our opinions. Dang.

Sometimes, these opinions, these beliefs, don’t support us living our natural lives. They can foment feelings of better than/less than, they can agitate feelings of isolation, or hate, dissatisfaction, discord, poor health, crummy jobs, and on and on.

As I choose to grow up, as I let go of my old, unsupportive beliefs, as I bring out more and more of my true self, I relax around being right. And, while I write to you everyday telling you what I think about stuff, I am only offering, and leave it up to you to take away from these thoughts the ones that you like, that feel supportive to you. As the saying goes, “take what you like, and leave the rest.”

Why do I choose my beliefs? What makes me decide?

I know that I can feel absolutely and unshakably right inside and be mistaken on the outside. That means that I take being right much more lightly that I used to. That’s because “right” is a feeling, not a fact. At the same time, as I grow up, I trust my gut way more than I used to. At the very least, it reminds me to be aware, to be mindful.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” Henry Ford said that. It really brought home for me the idea that right is relative.

I used to take that feeling of being right as an indication that I was carved-in-stone right. Now, I look at my attendant feelings; am I relaxed? Do I feel peaceful? Do I feel strong and competent? Do I feel blissful? Am I in my natural life? If the answer is yes, then hooray for me! If the answer is no, then I can look at where I am clenched, relax, and being right ceases to be important.

When I am living my natural life, I don’t think about being right or wrong. I don’t need to prove that I’m right, I don’t need to prove you wrong. When I am living my natural life, I recognize that there are many ways to accomplish something, many opinions that hold water, many contradictory beliefs that work to support us.

As I live my natural life, I lose my emotional rigidity, my belief in just one way. I understand that lots of ways will work to accomplish my goals and dreams, and so I feel a lot less pressure to do it “right.” I just need to do it. Now, my neck feels better, looser.

I still use my judgment, that’s a valuable gift, but I don’t feel like I need to batter you over the head with my ideas just because we disagree. I am better at shutting my mouth and living my example.

How have I changed from being rigidly right to allowing the way to flow?

How do you feel when you are sure?

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Saturday, May 10, 2014

Changing the Past

A two-card draw today, on the same theme, curiously. Why am I positive? and Why am I a winner? What a nice set of questions.

How are you doing with changing the way you talk to yourself? Are you still yammering at you about being a loser, listing all your faults, criticizing your own efforts and results, acting like the way things are is somehow not the way they should be?

What would it mean to you to understand that the present moment is perfect? That you, in this present moment, are perfect? Would that help inspire you to speak to yourself with more kindness, more respect?

I would love to do that for you, show you so you really get it, your good qualities, your skills and talents, the wonderful things that make you, you, and take out all that negative self talk, but I can’t. No one else can, only you.

What do you need to start noticing how you speak to yourself? Why would you treat you with kindness and respect? What would make you own your power, feel competent and capable? We can do this anytime. We don’t need to be old, we can change to this way of thinking no matter how old we are. And as we feel more empowered, we find compassion for our former self, and for our loved ones who may have helped us learn to be so cruel to ourselves.

Have you ever paid attention to what you find most comforting? Me, I have two particular gestures that really help me when I need comfort. But I will also tell you a secret I use to help me change stuff.

We all have particular times in our lives that we remember as hard, painful, and scary, like maybe we weren’t somehow going to make it through. I have resources and wisdom and skills now I didn’t have then.

When those times pop into my head, I have started “going back in time,” and I sit with that savaged former self, and I comfort her in the best ways I know we like, and I let her know it will be okay, and then it will be good, and then it will be great. Poor little thing often can barely take in what I’m saying, but she gets the comfort, and the soothing words, and something deep inside both of us changes; my current self for treating me with deep compassion, and my former self for getting exactly what I needed at the time. It may not change the past out there, but it does seem to change my internal experience.

Feeling compassion for our former selves is powerful. Forgiving our former selves is powerful. Comforting our former selves is powerful. It helps us release shame, and fear, and all sorts of icky stuff.

And, then, practicing our positive Creative Questions, changing how we talk to ourselves, appreciating our value, will do a lot to cleaning out our emotional basements.

I find it gets way easier when I remember that I am, we all are, perfect divine and infinite beings at our core. Speaking to our own selves with compassion, gentleness, and loving kindness will go a long way to helping us live our natural lives.

How have I changed from dissing myself to death to treating me with love and respect?

Friday, May 09, 2014

Doing Your Dirty Work

When we look at ourselves with loving and open eyes, we can see a lot. We can see our strengths and talents, we can see and value our accomplishments, we can see, with a gentle heart, places where we could use a little work.

When we look at ourselves with kindness and confidence, we can move mountains, we can carry the sky, we can eat an elephant, we can make weird metaphors.

When we look at ourselves with compassion and trust, we can shed the things that we do to make our lives harder, and nurture the things that make it just so easy.

Why am I strong? Why am I competent? Why am I capable? Why can I trust?

When I look at myself through those eyes, I can also see you through those eyes. I can nurture your strengths, and create a safe place for you to address your other stuff. I can listen with ears to hear you, rather than listening to make my clever answer. I can find the right words to help you let go of old crap.

Why am I an inspiration? How do I encourage confidence? What makes me a leader?

We have choices all the time. We can choose to inspire confidence, we can choose to dispirit with fear and shame. We can choose to create a safe space for emotional growth, we can choose to make a dark and scary place. We can choose to do this for ourselves or for others.

We’ve got the power!

Will I use my power for good or ill?

Recently, I have had several thing happen where I felt really bad, you know, like other people’s words had stabbed me in the heart, or kicked me in the gut. It took me a while to stop gasping at the injustice done me to notice that I was doing major victim response. I had totally bought into the pain those words were meant to cause, and was beating myself up with them. I had internalized those others’ anger at me, and was doing their dirty work.

I am going to lay an awful truth on you. I think you are strong enough to take it.

Every time I feel emotionally beat up, the person who is doing the beating is me. Same goes for you, same goes for all of us.

At some point in our lives, most of us enter into this hideous covenant with “others” that we will feel shame if they want us to, feel beat up when they say abusive stuff, feel anger when they flip our triggers, and so on. We agree to make ourselves feel awful in exchange for them saying rotten stuff to us, or doing rotten stuff.

You can’t make me feel bad, only I can make me feel bad.

When I decide that I am strong, and capable, competent, and trusting, you will not make me feel bad. You can say wretched things to me, I will hear you, but I will choose to feel strong and capable and competent, and trust myself. I will unchoose abusing myself as your proxy.

Hmm, there’s a bit of a feeling of manifesto there.

How have I changed from abusing myself on your behalf to being my own inspirational leader?

If you have entered into this covenant with someone, please re-read this, or maybe even print it out and put it somewhere you can remind yourself.

How do you feel when you are powerful?

Oh, and +1 and share, please, Thanks.

Thursday, May 08, 2014

IDK What I Want

This one has been coming up for a lot of people lately; I love it when that happens. How do I know what I want? What are my desires? What makes my goals clear?

We seem to be hardwired to only know what we don’t want.

Dang.

So maybe that means that learning what we do want is part of growing up.

I love the weirdness of how challenging it can be to figure out what we want when knowing what we want is so rewarding.

I love the image of sitting in a restaurant, with a huge menu, feeling really hungry, and the wait staff showing up every ten minutes or so, and the patron saying, “I won’t have the steak. I don’t want french fries or coleslaw or fruit. I don’t want the house salad or the soup.I also don’t want the chicken or the fish.” Well, you get the idea. Cracks me up.

How do I want my day to go? What do I like to do? What brings me joy? How do I have fun?

Now, for a good chunk of my early life, I didn’t think I would survive 5 years, so making a 5 year plan seemed absurd. What I did was spend time doing things I felt some passion for. So, I’ve had a varied and interesting life. And I have survived.

What do I want? What do I like to do best? What am I good at? How do I know what I want?

I can hit the big topics; family, career, health, wealth, spirit. I can start to drill down within those topics. I can think about my hobbies, or hobbies I might want to have, and where they would fit.

One weird way to come to know what we want is taking the time to make a list of what we don’t want. Every single thing we can think of. And once we’ve done that, we often have cleared the decks for looking at what we do want.

Another weird way to figure it out is to imagine yourself sometime in the future, thinking back about the best, funnest, coolest stuff you did, and noticing what that is. Messing around with that concept can also loosen up feeling stuck, or generate some motivation or inspiration.

A good way to stymie ourselves and nurture misery is to spend a lot of time thinking about what we can’t have. Things change, losses happen, opportunities are missed, dreams fail, but those things also have useful nuggets within them if we look for them.

Another way is to write out a BE-Do-Have list. I love these, and have been writing ‘em out for ages. You write a hundred things you wanna be, a hundred things you wanna do, and a hundred things you wanna have. Oh, my. This is a nice exercise because you really have to dig deep. And then you cross the stuff off your list as you either gain it, or unchoose it. And then you replace it with new stuff.

How have I changed from knowing only what I don’t want to having goals, ambitions, dreams and desires?

Would you tell me something you want? I want to slow down inside a bit more. It's easier to stay focused for me when I can do that, so I feel more productive. And a wind-proof compact umbrella.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2014

From Shame to Grace

What about the whole idea of grace? What do you think about grace?

Me, I like it. Now, my version is kinda cobbled together, but I find it comfortable, and something I can’t quite put my finger on that feels really nice.

It boils down to this: I like to believe that the universe is not just benign, but benevolent, and that it gives freely to me what I’m asking for without me incurring universal debt. Plus, I add in the other definition of grace: elegance and poise, and the elegant part adds in streamlined, clean, and efficient in the best way.

When I remember to ask myself, “How do I feel when I am full of grace?” I feel really good. I feel clear, and competent. I feel like a most excellent version of me.

Why am I innocent? What makes me choose grace? How do I feel pure?

I have the idea that the opposite of grace is shame. One reason I think that is because, the same way we don’t to do anything to feel filled with grace, we don’t have to do anything to feel filled with shame.

Shame is interesting in that way. The feeling itself implies that we have done something bad, even if we haven’t. Shyness, discouragement, feeling inferior, holding dark secrets, embarrassment, self-consciousness; these are all things we might feel shameful about.

Sometimes, when we are forming our opinions about ourselves, an adult does something bad to us, and another adult turns away, dismissing the event, or minimizing our hurt, or even ignoring it altogether. What we get from that is that our stuff doesn’t count.

What it boils down to is that we feel defective, fatally flawed, damaged goods. When we feel guilty, the feeling is that we have done something wrong. Shame is the feeling that we are wrong. How heartbreaking is that. You know, the “What the hell’s the matter with you?” thing.

Why am I good enough? How do I know I am okay? What makes me perfect?

If I recognize that feeling in me, that I am garbage, I can change it. I can start to notice when others are shaming me, for whatever issues they have, poor things, and not let it in. At least as powerful, if not a lot more so, I can start noticing when I am shaming myself.

Noticing when I shame myself, stopping, apologizing to me, and changing the feeling with a good Creative Question can transform that experience instantly. When we have learned to be shameful, we think nothing of being cruel to ourselves, and then we are often treating others poorly, too.

As we shift this excessive shame out, we are treating ourselves with kindness, with respect, with love. The more we do that, the less we feel worthless, the easier it is to pass our time in grace.

Over and over, we find that we need to notice ourselves, notice what we are doing, with compassion and an open heart, and gently and kindly shift it from being horrible to ourselves to being kind. Add relaxing to that, and we are living our natural life, where being kind is natural, compassion flows, and we walk in grace.

How have I changed from foundering in shame to walking in grace?

How do you experience grace?

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Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Trumping the Grumps

Gratitude, shmatitude. Why are you always going on and on about gratitude anyway, especially when you are always talking about how we deserve good stuff? Why should I feel gratitude about getting what I should be getting?

Gratitude is kind of like cleaning up your house. When our house is clean, everything seems a little easier, a little more comfortable.When we spend time feeling grateful and appreciative, the world is a little nicer, our lives are a bit brighter.

When I am focused on feeling grateful, I am not whining. I can’t feel grateful and complain at the same time. For example, when I am irritated at the birds outside my window for waking me up at 4 am, I can go to grateful that I can hear, that I live where there are birds to sing. That I have a window and a bed. That totally trumps the grumps.

When I am focused on feeling appreciative, I am not a victim or a martyr. I’m not angry or scared. I am not trying to live in the past or in the future. I am present, I am blessed. And from that place, it’s just a hop, skip and jump to my natural life.

Why am I grateful? What makes me enjoy? Why am I satisfied?

When I am feeling grateful, I am choosing to appreciate my life as it is, not as I think it should be. I may have issues, we all do, and they may be intense, but I can still give myself a gratitude break.

I have set myself the goal of writing out some appreciations first thing every morning, while I drink my first cup of hot whatever. Some mornings, I have to make myself stop writing because I could go on forever because I feel so full of appreciation and love for my life, my surroundings, my loved ones. Some mornings I have to think a bit, but like priming a pump, which I’ve actually done several times, once I find something, more things flow forth.

Some mornings, finding something to appreciate, to be grateful for, feels like looking for the last dodo. I am crabby or sad or blue, and my life is devoid of anything that could ever bring me joy again. (Not that I EVER get dramatic about stuff.)

Here’s what happens. Because I have made a commitment to write out appreciations every day, I need to find some damn thing to write down. I remember that when I am not feeling crappy, I have easily found stuff to be grateful for, and that my feeling of there being nothing is a lie. It may piss me off, but at least it reminds me that everything I’m feeling isn’t true, doesn’t need to be aired and shared, and some feelings do best to be let go.

When I just need to get started, I have tried looking back at my old entries, but if I’m not feeling it, they all look dumb. I bet you know where I go next. Yeah. Creative Questions.

How do I feel when I appreciate? How do I feel when I am grateful? What makes me feel blessed? These feelings open my heart. When my heart is open, I live my life better, at a higher vibration, with more compassion, more generosity, more joy.

You gotta like that.

How have I changed from grumbling about it to enjoying my gratitude?

What do you appreciate right at this moment? How do you feel blessed?

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Monday, May 05, 2014

What to Do with the Wah-Wahs

One of the things I love about my Creative Questions decks is that I often will pull a card that is absolutely what I don’t want to hear. Like when I wake up crabby and hateful, and I draw the “Why am I so positive?” card. It reminds me to choose.

When I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, it usually means I’ve had a bad dream. Usually I don’t remember my dreams, but I do recognize that I’ve had one when I wake up feeling off.

When I first notice it, I am just in it. After a while, I start to feel uncomfortable in it, and that’s usually when I remember I can change my feelings easily by changing my thoughts, my posture, and my facial expressions.

What is good in my life? How am I optimistic? Why do I look on the bright side?

I first learned that my feelings weren’t somehow inflicted on me by cruel, outside forces many years ago. I really wanted them to be. I really didn’t like the idea of being responsible for my feelings, or my attitude, or my behavior. I wanted that all to be out of my control. I kind of liked feeling like it was all your fault. I mean, if my bad feelings were your fault, then I didn’t really have to do anything about except complain and feel bad.

Feeling sorry for myself was something I got really good at. One of the old AA saws I really like, “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.” It reminds me that we often use feeling sorry for ourselves as a REALLY GOOD REASON for all sorts of crummy behavior, from things that mostly just hurt us to things that can actually destroy our families, and communities.

I can’t feel competent and capable and strong when I am busy feeling sorry for myself. I don’t feel helpful or useful or kind when I am busy feeling sorry for myself, unless I am thinking how ungrateful you are. I don’t feel soft or open or light when I am feeling sorry for myself, self-pity is heavy and dark and dank, and often cruel.

What makes me feel light? How could I feel confident? Why am I optimistic? Why do I trust?

When I am ready to let my crappy feelings go, I can speed things up by changing my body posture while applying my good questions. Just for fun, think about someone who feels awful, you know, depressed, sorry for themselves, beat up by life. Put yourself in that posture: slumped shoulders, head hanging forward, deep frown. Notice how small your breath gets. What else do you notice about that posture?

Now think about someone who feels good, you know, sunny, cheerful, pleased with life. Sit upright and relaxed, shoulders kind of back and down, a crinkly-eyed, slightly open-mouth smile, big, deep breaths. Keep that posture going for a while and notice how much lighter you feel. That smile, when held for a minute or so, actually causes your system to release feel-good neuro-chemicals.

I hardly ever wake up on the nether side of the bed any more. I love that. I love that when I do, I can expect to feel good again in a couple hours at the outside. I love that when I do feel good, being responsible for my feelings is wonderful.

How have I changed from feeling sorry for myself to enjoying my life?

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Sunday, May 04, 2014

Secrets, Intimacy, and Trust

What does being intimate mean to you? I was so intimidated by that word. Physical intimacy was easy, but emotional intimacy? I couldn’t get my head wrapped around the concept. I had the feeling that exposing my feelings, my thoughts, my very self, that I would end up flayed. Not very encouraging. I was so sad that I had failed at intimacy.

I chalked it up on the side of Stuff I Can’t Do, and went on with my rather lonely life. I was in a couple 12 step groups at the time, and working on step 4, I took a moral inventory of myself as fearlessly as I could, then told a chaplain what I had done, and how I felt about it. I felt a little better. I found a sponsor and told her secrets. I felt a little lighter.

I told my secrets and shared the attendant feelings. And as I uncovered more secrets, I told those. My secrets, not yours. I made some kind friends, I found a wonderful therapist (my eighth, if you were wondering) and told my therapist everything, and I had a ton of secrets in my life, and I told my dear friends a lot. Little by little I turned my poisonous secrets into something benign. Little by little I integrated the traumas I had kept hidden. Little by little, I cleaned out my emotional basement. Lonely is often a result of a crowded emotional basement, and so I found myself feeling less lonely. (I define lonely as disconnected from ourselves, and lonesome as disconnected from others.)

Why am I intimate? What makes me connect? How do I engage?

One of the answers I get for all three of those questions is, I trust.

I sure wasn’t good at it, but I had to start somewhere; I was great at trusting the wrong people. So I went to professional people who seemed like they would have being trustworthy in their job descriptions. Babysteps. We want to move forward, but we don’t want to go too far too fast. If we scare ourselves, we will often just stop.

I didn’t trust me, I didn’t trust my gut, and I sure didn’t trust my judgment. And as I told my secret stories, and felt my feelings with someone, that started to shift.

Why am I soft? How do I enjoy feeling vulnerable? What makes me drop my defences?

I will say, I am not always running around defenceless. I am not always soft and vulnerable, but I am more often way more often than I used to be. I also have a lot of trustworthy friends now. I also know that I feel easier when I am vulnerable. I trust me, I trust that I can cope, I trust the universe will provide what I need to take care of me.

I enjoy a bunch of intimate friendships. I am good at them. Intimacy is now easy and pretty much second nature. I appreciate it as part of my natural life, but also as one of the paths to my natural life.

I now have a personal rule, namely, I have no secrets of my own. The secrets others tell me aren’t mine to tell, but my secrets get told to any one of several people. Sometimes I tell all of them. It keeps crap out of my emotional basement, it keeps me feeling fresh and light.

How have I changed from feeling isolated and lonely to feeling connected and close?

Have you found your trustworthy people to tell your secrets to?

If you found something of value, useful, or interesting in this contemplation, please +1 and share. How do you feel when you are doing good?

Saturday, May 03, 2014

The Cake or the Crumbs

I had an interesting moment recently, when a friend pointed out that something I had asked for recently wasn’t very much. Throwback thought ensued.

Back when, I hoped for crumbs. I hoped people wouldn’t be mean. I hoped someone might remember my birthday. I hoped I might get a kind word, or some positive attention.

Because we are unique beings, each of us has our own mind map of how the world goes. Each of us has our own idea of what words mean, what gestures mean, what facial expressions mean. We tend to be drawn to people who interpret things more or less as we do, rather than people who look at things in a very different way. It’s one of the reasons that travel is so life-expanding; experiencing life in a very different context.

Looking at our expectations can be eye-opening.

What do I want? What do I expect? How am I satisfied? Why do I choose?

When we ask questions about things like expectations, desires, how the world goes, we are looking our beliefs straight in the eye. We get to use our powers of judgment to decide if these beliefs serve us well or poorly. We get to decide if they support us and our loved ones, or rip us off. Do they set us up for success or not?

When I couple crappy expectations with a bad attitude, my day is going to suck. So often we have a thing to do, and rehearse all the ways it can go wrong. We build up our expectations for things not to work out, so even if they do, we feel disappointed. We are so cute!

By rehearsing all the ways stuff can blow, we are setting ourselves up in a bunch of ways. We start to expect things to happen as they do in our ugly fantasies. Coping with negative stuff takes a lot more energy, so we feel wiped out physically and emotionally, we feeling like we deserve to indulge in our favorite soft addictions, and deserve to be in a bad mood, and inflict it on everyone.

Yikes.

Why could things work out? How would things go my way? Why would I choose to be happy?

If I am feeling really clear about what I want and I’m not getting it, chances are good that I have a bad belief in the way.

Okay, that’s the next piece of this little equation. Sometimes we get a limiting idea about ourselves, and identify with it, and color ourselves with that brush. We can find these by noticing when we say or think stuff like “I always, I never, I can’t, I don’t.” Notice variations on that. “People always treat me, nobody ever comes through for me.”

Sometimes, when we start noticing these beliefs, apply our good Creative Questions, we can change them in an instant. Sometimes, we will need to practice for a while, but it’s another way we will improve the quality of our life.

It takes a lot more energy to filter for crap than it does to filter for good.

How have I changed from expecting the worst to enjoying to best life offers?

Do you have a conflict between a want and a belief? What would be a good Creative Question to resolve that conflict?

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Friday, May 02, 2014

Perfect Self

What do you excel at? Where do your strengths lie? How do you know you are great?

Ooh! Great? We kind of aren’t supposed to think we are great, at least not out loud. We have this thing around being full of ourselves, or tooting our own horn, arrogant, haughty, vain, smug. Ew. I bet you guessed that’s not the kind of great I’m talking about.

That kind of doesn’t come from the inside, but is a veneer slicked on over an insecure self. If I need to make you feel small, it’s usually to try to divert you from how small I feel.

I’m talking about that feeling of being great that is at our core. I mean, think about it. You are a miracle, just by being born. Then, all the amazing convergences that had to happen for you to get where you are right now, with your special skills and insights, your amazing heart, your contributions.

It boggles the mind.I mean, think about it for a bit. Are you boggling yet?

To find your greatness, go within, Grasshopper.

How do I excel? What makes me superb? How am I successful?

My life changed in a very tiny, profound way a million years ago, when I was sitting quietly, minding my own depressed and vaguely suicidal business, and suddenly had the image and momentarily complete understanding that, at the very core of my core being, I was/am/and forever will be perfect. Not pretty good, or swell, or even really neato, but actually, flawless, limitless, perfection, and so is everyone else. All the flaws, all the shortcomings, and faults, defects and lapses are like so much crud that accretes around that perfection. It’s still there, and the more we address our crap, the more that perfection can shine through.

How do I know I am perfect? What makes me see I am fantastic? How am I wonderful?

The more I use my good Creative Questions, the more I choose to relax, refresh, restore, the more I am aware of that core of perfection. The more aware of it I am, the more I like to nurture it. The more I nurture it, the higher the frequency I am vibrating at, to use a kind of woo woo image, cuz it’s all about the vibes. As my normal frequency shifts up, I become more attractive to others with higher frequencies. My relationships are more satisfying and cozy, my activities and tasks are more in line with my purpose. I like to take care of me, and of you, I tend to sleep a bit better, and wake up looking forward to my day with energy and at least a good attitude, if not actual joy.

And, yes, some mornings I wake up cranky. Or exhausted. Or blue. Sometimes I get really P.O.-ed. Or super sad. Some days I make dumb choices, and see me doing it and can’t seem to stop it. But it’s getting better every day.

And at my core is my perfect self.

At your core is your perfect self. Your miracle of creation self. Your unique, glorious, infinite and divine perfect self. At your core you are radiant, luminous, beneficent, and supremely peaceful.

It’s all inside.

How have I changed from pretending I’m okay to connecting with my perfection?

If you found something useful or interesting, or just nice in this contemplation, please +1 and share. Thanks. How do you feel when you make a difference?

Thursday, May 01, 2014

This Way, Please

This was one of those things that blew me away, how important it is when it comes to growing up, that is. It seems like a light-weight topic, but knowing this can change your life, and make a big difference for your loved ones, and even make the world a better place.

Know what you want.

It seems like a simple thing, doesn’t it. And yet, many of us don’t have a clue.

We often barely know what we like.

So why does this matter, knowing what we want, knowing what we like? Well, if you find a magic lamp, and the genie offers you three wishes, what are you going to wish for? I mean, we’ve seen how it goes for people who’ve never really thought about it.

On the one hand, that’s just silly, Pam. On the other hand, our lives are filled with the equivalent of a genie all the time.

How do I know what I want? What makes me sure? Why do I express my ambitions?

So, I have a bunch of things I want, from material stuff to emotional goals, to career milestones, and so on. I think about these things, so they are up on my radar.

I look at my dreams, decide if I want them to be goals, and if I do, I make a plan, with manageable steps. And then watch out!

Call it the Law of Attraction, or Filtering, or whatever you like, keeping these things energized and active means that we are more likely to find opportunities to realize our dreams.

What makes my life meaningful? How do I feel when I am on purpose?

So, we are here in the world, with our special gifts, our talents and experiences, and now we have our goals, our plans, and the Universe will present us with someone who has a piece we need, or an opportunity to gain some experience that will help, or show us a story that allows us to streamline our plan. And because we are keeping our goals energized, we recognize and accept these gifts.

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that my first really big goal was to be happy. I was so low I didn’t really even know what I meant by that, but I kept it energized, and I tried things, I took recommendations, trainings, workshops. I asked questions like crazy, especially when I met people who seemed happy.

Energized.

If I were able to manifest to myself back into the day when I made that pledge, to feel how I feel now, I would probably pass out. The difference is at least night and day.

Making some time to think about what you want will make a difference. We don’t always need to come up with the how, not right away. Making a goal, making a plan with wiggle room, even making a vision board, or some other material reminder of our direction, will help us stay energized.

How have I changed from feeling aimless to choosing my path?

What are your favorite goals? I would love to hear about them, and help you come up with some good, supportive Creative Questions.

Please +1 and share, if you like what you find here. How do you feel when you make a difference?