Step 1: Start Where You Are

From the Steps to Learning How to Fly series.

I like to live my life by what I call wisdom according to Aerosmith: Life is a journey, not a destination. It isn't about where you're headed, it's about the places you go to along the way. I personally want that journey to be full and rich, about learning new things and appreciating the beauty around me, about living mindfully and discovering my passions and expressing who I really am.

I haven't always lived that way--even as I was learning the tools necessary to spread my wings, I spent a substantial amount of time living my life the way other people expected me to. I was a good girl, usually doing the "right" things, even as I was exploring realms that I didn't think most of my friends and family would understand. My life took on a splintered quality as different pieces of me showed up depending on who I was with. I often felt like I was a shadow of myself, flimsy and insubstantial, and I yearned for the day when I could be one coherent me. But that was where I was, and the first thing I needed to learn was to let go of those expectations, to give myself a break, to stop being so hard on myself before I could begin the shift from living my life externally towards exploring the me on the inside and letting her light shine.

Starting where you are is about being loving and compassionate towards yourself. You may dream of what you want your life to look like, who you want to be, and often that leads to beating yourself up, judging yourself and finding yourself lacking. This is counterproductive, placing the emphasis on what you don't want instead of on what you do want. The first thing to do is to recognize that you are where you are, and while you are capable of realizing your dreams, you have to be gentle with yourself as you take the steps necessary to get there. I like to think of it as building your muscles. If you had a dream of running a marathon, you wouldn't try to run 26.2 miles tomorrow. You would put a training program in motion and build your muscles and your endurance to enable success. Each step in the training program is a stretch and while you get close to your objective during training, the day of the event is the day you actually achieve your goal.

This is how realizing life goals works, too. While we don't always have a full training program laid out in front of us so we know in advance the steps we'll take to reach our goals, life is always feeding us opportunities to stretch ourselves, to grow in the direction we want to be moving in. When a challenge comes up for you today, instead of handling it the way you might have in the past, ask yourself how you can react differently this time. The answer might feel a little outside of your comfort zone, but do it anyway. You know where the old road leads--explore a new road and see if it lands you in a place you haven't been before. Play with it, experiment a bit. You might not land exactly where you want to be, but keep experimenting with it as situations come up until you find a new way of handling it that feels more authentic to who you are and where you want to go in life. If you're shy, a public speaking engagement might be too big of a stretch, but talking to a stranger in a bar might be just the right size. Strengthen that extroverted muscle, that faith muscle, that love muscle--whatever it is that you've been seeking, that's been missing in your life.

There is always something right in front of us, right where we are today that is a gift for the growth we have been asking for. It might feel small, it might be a just baby step, but each step is a movement, and each step opens up new opportunities for expansion. As T. Harv Ecker reminds us:

Success is a learnable skill. You can learn to succeed at anything . . . If you want to be a great piano player, you can learn how to do it. If you want to be truly happy, you can learn how to do it. If you want to be rich, you can learn how to do it. It doesn’t matter where you are right now. It doesn’t matter where you’re starting from. What matters is that you are willing to learn.

Start where you are right now, in this moment, and take a step, begin the process of learning how to spread those wings, to move in the direction that you've always dreamed of.

Recommended Reading:
The Alchemist, by Paolo Coelho
Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
Spiritual Fitness, by Caroline Reynolds
Wherever You Go, There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Photo: Views of Bratislava, by Lukas Ondrousek

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Drifting

I have to laugh at myself sometimes. Yesterday, my thinkArete.com Big Idea that comes in a daily email was about "drifting." It essentially was talking about the patterns we fall into that take us off course, that distance us from our Source, from our goals. Some of the examples he uses of ways we all drift are: "blame, criticize (my personal favorite), judge, lecture, ignore, explain, or withdraw. If, for some odd reason those don’t work, just try these: control, be sarcastic (!), procrastinate, watch TV, complain, get overwhelmed, justify, go shopping, (whatever you do, definitely!) don’t breathe, interrupt, get righteous, space out or worry."

The reason this makes me laugh is that yesterday, I drifted. Not all day, but for a substantial portion of it. Mostly I was in to withdrawing, procrastinating, and spacing out, but I'm sure there were other things in there as well. While there were several reasons for that drift, at the end of the day, aren't they all just excuses? Isn't it all just your ego throwing up resistance to keep you off balance? The funniest part about it all is that I was completely aware of what was happening. I observed myself getting off track and instead of taking steps to rectify the situation, I threw myself into it whole hog. Perhaps that is why I was able to, from time to time, pull myself out of it long enough to clean the kitchen, make the lasagna I'm entertaining with this evening, take a friend to the airport. And perhaps it is also why I was able to get up this morning and get back on track without a massive effort. My home is spotless, I did my 4 mile training walk, went to the farmer's market, and I still have time to sit down and do a blog post before I get ready for my guests to arrive this evening.

Today's thinkArete.com Big Idea was about "shifting," what we do when we want to "get back into Ease and Flow." The gist is that we have to breathe, and breathe again, and breathe some more, which I take to mean we have to take time for conscious connection to Source, and to ourselves. It certainly feels significantly better than drifting does, you can actually feel the shift taking place in your body. And I suppose that is what life is about, really. While we all strive to be on track 100% of the time, we're human, and we make mistakes, we drift off course. The trick is not to stay there, to make sure we take the time to shift, to reorient ourselves so that we're moving in the direction we consciously are choosing to, the direction that feels like it is taking us towards our goals. And be gentle with ourselves in the process. I don't know about you, but I can always use a reminder of that. Namaste.

Underdog

What an amazing game today. There is something affirming about rooting for the underdog and then seeing them win. The Giants were a wild card team -- they were expected to lose every playoff game AND the Super Bowl, but they didn't let other people's expectations affect their vision of themselves. They just got out there and played like they deserved to be there, ultimately proving to everyone else that they did. It's an inspirational concept we can all apply to some aspect of our lives. It's kind of akin to "Act As If" -- if you act as if you've already reached your goals, everything else will fall into place to actually make you reach those goals. Good stuff.

So, my back is still not 100%, but it is healing amazingly quickly. I'm going to do my part by going to bed now and getting a good night's sleep. I don't know what it is, but this week feels like it is going to be HUGE. Keep your eyes open and let me know what unfolds for you too. Namaste.

yes is a world

I was all set to write about the power of action today, but as I was swapping out my "Quote of the Week" this morning, it occurred to me that as much as I love e.e. cummings poem that was there, I haven't necessarily been LIVING it.

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

Reading this poem, even if it's my hundredth time reading it, gives me chills. It speaks to that part of me that has spent most of my life asleep, that part of me that yearns for me to stand up and truly say YES that all of life has to offer. It speaks to me in the language of my soul, answering a call that my spirit has been crying for a long, long time.

I'm still at a point where I'm not sure I know what living a life of YES would truly look like, but I think I can work backwards from what it would not look like. It would not look like settling--it would be making choices that serve me and my goals. It would not look like accepting table scraps and saying thank you, can I have some more please--it would be recognizing my power and strength and the gifts that I bring to the world, knowing my value and expecting it to be seen. It would not be gray and flat and lifeless--it would be full of color, fully fleshed out, vibrant, animate, alive.

Sometimes I'm blown away by how difficult it is for me to speak my truth, to stand in my power and tell the world that I'm here, that I'm a force for good in this universe, that I am a voice of wisdom and understanding, that I am a conduit for God or Infinite Intelligence or Source or whatever you want to call that all-powerful, all-encompassing ONENESS that is the creative source of our universe. The DailyOM this morning struck such a chord with me, talking about that feeling of spinning our wheels, possibly even feeling like we're going backwards, but needing to remember that each step is a step forward. Forward progress, it's all forward progress. That can be so difficult for me to recognize some days, when I find myself stuck in a pattern that I thought I'd caught and eliminated 10, 15, 20 years ago. How long am I going to allow myself to be stuck under the mantle of "I'm not good enough"?

But this is when I have to take a deep breath, let all that tension in my shoulders and my stomach dissipate and remember that the "I'm not good enough" of 2008 is a mere shadow of its former self. The truth of my forward progress really is self-evident--when I let go my perfectionism and judgment, I can see it clear as day. And this past year has been about moving what I know from my head to my heart, into my body, so that I can FEEL it. I suppose this next year is going to be about moving it out of my head and body into the world, really putting my money where my mouth is and living the life that I truly want, that I know I deserve, and that I truly was born to live. This year is going to be about shifting my self-definition, how I perceive myself internally and how I describe myself to the world.

I am a writer. I am a coach. I am a spiritual intuitive. I have unique gifts to share with the world. This is who I am. Do you know who you are? How do you want to define yourself moving forward? Are you ready to share that definition of yourself? I cannot promise you that this kind of shift will be easy, but I know that, for me at least, it is necessary. And I hope to even have some fun with it along the way. Namaste.

Order out of chaos

Today felt a bit like the universe was saying, "Oh yeah? Let's see if you really mean that." After the joy of last week's spring cleaning, I've been stoked to tackle a few other organization projects that are ready and waiting for me around the house. First up? The linen closet. I never knew you could cram so much stuff into such a small space. It had gotten so bad that the past few weeks whenever I needed to put something in there, I would just open the door, take whatever was in my hand and shove it into the first available space. It was literally overflowing. It didn't feel like that long ago since I'd tackled at least the shelf with the medicines and toiletries, but it might as well have been last millennium with the state it was in. I vowed that no matter what else came up today, I would tackle that linen closet.

Remembering the last time I'd cleaned it out, I was thinking it was an hour long job, maybe two at the outside. I got in there and started pulling stuff out and pulling stuff out and pulling stuff out until I didn't have any place to put the contents any more. But I knew that the shelves needed to be cleaned off and the carpet vacuumed so I just kept going until the closet was completely empty... and my home was an absolute disaster. By the time the closet was clean and I was ready to even begin throwing things away, let alone putting stuff back in, I'd been working for over an hour. I was beginning to understand the enormity of the task I'd taken on and it was feeling completely overwhelming. I'd like to be able to say that I saw the gift in this situation as it was happening, but I didn't -- I ended up sharing my overwhelment with my mother and husband, aka complaining. My mother, in all her wisdom, reminded me that this experience was a metaphor for life -- sometimes you have to mess things up before you can start seeing the results you are looking for. Just what I needed to hear!

This is exactly the way life works. We recognize that things in our life aren't working out the way we want them to, but we know that change can be disruptive. Moving towards our goals might even make the things we already have and enjoy in our life appear to disappear, and so all too often we stay in a place that feels less than or stuck instead of taking the steps necessary to reach a place of freedom, of more. These small scale examples are life's reminders that even in the midst of great chaos, there is always a divine order waiting for us to discover it. So go ahead, make a big mess of things, it's okay. When you come out the other side all you will be able to see is how everything fits into place beautifully.

I really have to learn to take before shots for comparison purposes, but here's an after picture of my much calmer, orderly linen closet. Aaaah... definitely worth it!