by Lucky Lucy | Jan 19, 2016 | create your life, Life, self development, Uncategorized |
As a humble human being, I still get frustrated when things don’t go my way. I’m at Point A and I want to get to Point B. Should be straightforward, right? But in life I find it rarely is.
The older I get and the more self-awareness I develop, the more I realise just how circular our life path is. There is nothing linear about it.
Consider Exhibit A, the entrepreneur. By their very nature this creature is a creative thinker. They are not working in a straight line. They are looking here, over there, under there and seeing patterns and connections where others only see structures and what has been before. Their creations are not born of a linear path.
Consider your own life in the same way; it is not a straight line from birth to death. There are twists and turns, and ups and downs. Connections are formed and broken, then sometimes formed again in seemingly random patterns. Our experiences form layer upon layer in our psyche, stacking up, collapsing and reforming; circles upon circles.
Is it any wonder my lovely rational brain (with its many fine qualities) feels frustrated? My brain is trained to want the linear. Straight lines and clear outcomes. A + B = C not X – 2 +B + TxT – Y= Q/N x 2Z. My mind craves the linear like an alcoholic craves liquor at dawn.
But life isn’t like that. It gets less like that every day.
Life is circular and interconnected with layers and side streets, blind alleys and roundabouts. Linear is a non-existent channel to nowhere.
Far better (as I frequently urge my brain) to accept this journey as the wonderfully circular and unexpected travail it surely is. What was so great about the ‘expected’ anyway?
Better to accept I have no clue what will happen tomorrow let alone next year. I must accept the Universe has its own timetable and a roadmap written in a language I have never heard of and cannot pronounce. I simply need to fit into the Universe’s master plan (without knowing what it is) and attempt as much non-resistance as I can to achieve a semblance of sustainable peace.
The circular patterns of life must be embraced and I must abandon my plans for the linear. Linear life is a construct destined for extinction. Linear life doesn’t really exist.
Are you interested in expanding your self-awareness and exploring the non-linear path? If so, check out my intuitive mentoring services at Lucretia’s Words
by Lucky Lucy | Dec 22, 2015 | control, Fear, Heart, Uncategorized |
A while ago I saw something I wanted and I went for it. It was tantalisingly close so I reached out and…found my hand grasping at thin air. What I thought was there had disappeared. Actually, it was still there but had moved out of my reach. So I moved forward and reached out again, but the same thing happened. The pattern kept repeating and each time I became more and more desperate to hold that thing just out of my reach.
At the time I thought I was following my heart. After all, that’s how I always try to live – following my heart. But in hindsight, I realise that while I started off that way, in the end I was following my fear.
When your heart tells you to go for something, you should put all your attention there. We know worthwhile things in life often don’t come easily and there is effort and attention required.
But there is a tipping point between following your heart and falling into fear and then letting that guide your actions.
When you are truly in your heart and following your path (these two things are completely connected), there is a peace and surety that comes from that. When you are in that space you don’t fall into desperateness when that thing you desire starts moving in a different direction. Instead, you can stand exactly where you are and know it’s going to be okay because if it’s meant to be yours it will be.
It’s difficult for my brain to grasp and a challenge to articulate this concept, but bear with me.
The Universe responds to action and intention. So when you are following your heart you must act and have clear intention about the direction you wish to go and what you want.
However, sometimes what we want is not for us at that time. Or, sometimes that thing we’re chasing is simply part of a bigger lesson and we were never meant to reach that goal. Unfortunately, we can’t possibly see this at the time because we are in the zone of going for what our heart wants and where that leads us. Then when we feel it moving away, we panic. We get desperate. We are in pain. We feel rejected. Lost. And we wonder what went wrong. We ask ourselves, what else could I have done to change the outcome and achieve my heart’s desire?
This happens in our careers and it most certainly happens in our relationships with romantic partners.
While I’ve successfully grasped (pardon the pun) this lesson in my work-life, I certainly haven’t mastered it when it comes to my relationships with the opposite sex. My history is littered with stories of following my heart and then falling into desperation when they move away. It’s like a bad habit I can’t quit.
I’m all about the love you see. Love, love, love. So I follow my heart where it takes me and I try to trust it as much as possible.
Some people might call that naïve. That’s okay because I am a romantic optimist and I do look for the best rather than the worst in people and situations. I see all the wonderful possibilities. Is that naïveté when there are so many reasons to always expect the worst?
But, I’m getting off track now. The point of my post is this.
When you are following your heart you trust that things will work out as they’re supposed to. So, if something or someone persistently runs in the opposite direction away from you it is wise to stop, be still and ask if your behaviour in response to this is coming from your heart or egoic fear.
If you are acting from your heart you will do what you need to do while holding on to your self-respect, your values and your peace of mind. You will clearly state your intention to the Universe (and the people involved), do what you can (action), then step back and wait (listen to your heart).
If you find yourself pursuing something as it runs away, and you desperately grasp at and try to hold onto it, then you need to stop and recalibrate because you have fallen into fear and that will get you nowhere. However, fear will lead you to abandon your self-respect and often humiliate yourself (yes, that would be my voice of experience there).
If you are living from your heart there is no fear because you know everything is as it needs to be and you can only do what you can do to reach what you want. You can’t control the outcome (or the other people involved) and if desperation and fear start to kick in then you know you’ve definitely gone off track.
by Lucky Lucy | Dec 20, 2015 | break ups, compassion, Emotional, Grief, poetry, self discovery |
Around this time last year I had my heart broken by a man I loved with everything in me. When I say ‘broken’, I mean it. My experience with that man literally broke me apart and I completely lost myself in Grief.
I have grieved relationships and people lost from my life before but this time was different. This time Grief took me over and I fell to the bottom of huge pit of despair where I stayed for what seemed like an interminable period. I cried every day for months and months. I raged at the world and at him. I went to places so dark in my mind that I thought I would never make it out alive. Grief was a bitch that would not let me go.
She was with me every moment and, as I writer, my only recourse was to pour my pain onto a page. I wrote 70,000 words between January and May. Then something unexpected happened; the prose turned to poetry. It felt like Grief cracked open this whole new part of me and poetry fell out. It was strange and also so very relentless. Grief was a demanding client. She demanded I write and write even when tired, emotionally spent and physically exhausted. I had to write. It all had to come out.
The muse was my therapist and my words, catharsis. When I read those words now they often seem like they were written by someone else. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes my words impress me and I ask myself, ‘Did I really write that?’ Those words hold an essence and a depth that wasn’t in me 18 months ago. I can thank Grief for that.
She held me close and I held her closer. She defined me and I let her. Then our relationship took an unexpected twist when, after about six months, Grief left me to find another soul to torment. She had penetrated every part of me and her departure left an emptiness behind; a space to be filled by something or, perhaps, someone else.
I didn’t realise she was leaving until after she’d gone. Grief had been my constant companion and influencer. Her occupation of my life was something I dreaded daily but she was also a dragging weight I’d carried willingly for months. Then suddenly, I was free.
I don’t know if I let go of Grief or she let go of me. Maybe it was a combination of both. It felt weird not to have her around. But I couldn’t hold onto her or the pain anymore. I couldn’t stay in that place of torment. It was time to move on.
Some people say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I don’t know about that. All I can say is, although I never, ever want to be hurt like that again, I know the experience showed me parts of myself I didn’t know existed. Grief was a hard taskmaster (okay, a complete bitch) but she taught me a lot about pain, creativity, what I’m capable of (the wonderful and awful, shameful parts) and my ability to just keep going when I’d rather give up completely.
I don’t wish her to visit again. But I am thankful for the lessons Grief taught me because they helped me to become a wiser person, and a stronger writer.
by Lucky Lucy | Oct 21, 2015 | empowerment, mentor, self discovery |
Years ago, during a time of great confusion in my life, a kind mentor advised me to write a letter to myself because I felt lost and was unsure how to make a major decision.
‘Write a letter to yourself,’ she said. ‘Just go somewhere where you feel safe and won’t be disturbed, then write by hand (no computer allowed), “Dear Lucy, What do you want?” then write until you can write no more. Don’t edit as you go. Just write.’
That first letter helped me gain so much clarity about my life and what I wanted. I’ve also used this technique several times since then when I’ve been unsure of how I wished to move forward.
I’ve also shared this process (and a few others) with my clients and friends over the years because I know how powerful it is. Writing a letter to yourself allows you to articulate what you want.
This idea of allowing yourself to openly ‘want’ things has been coming up in a few of my conversations recently. So many of us seem to struggle with ‘wanting’. For some reason, we often don’t think it’s okay to want the things we truly desire. Comments range from ‘I don’t want to want too much’ to ‘I don’t know what I want’. Other times when asked, ‘What do you want?’ we simply respond with a blank frozen look because we don’t feel brave enough to speak our truth or we haven’t given ourselves permission to acknowledge what we want…even to ourselves.
We will get in our own way a hundred times to avoid saying and claiming what we want. And I have definitely been guilty of this myself, many times in my life.
Sometimes we worry that others might laugh at what we want or worse, they might think we’re ‘getting too big for our boots’. We may even think we’re not worthy of that thing so we’ll decide it’s best to not even admit to ourselves. Or maybe that thing will disrupt our lives so we decide to play along with things as they are while becoming more and more dissatisfied with each passing day, month and year. We will stumble along trying to make things work that never quite come together and we always feel like something is missing.
But, let’s face it. This is not a recipe for a fulfilling life. So, for those of you who are hiding from your ‘want’ or trying to uncover it, might I suggest a letter-writing activity is in order? It always help me get clarity when I’m struggling and I know it will help you too.
You don’t have to tell anyone about it. It’s just for you and it’s no one else’s business. But you will find that one letter will help you see what you really want. That will be the first step towards articulating aloud and then claiming the very things that will make your heart sing.
So stop running away from your want and you might even find you can have it.
by Lucky Lucy | Jul 27, 2015 | compassion, Emotional, Self esteem |
We all have those things in our past, those moments that go some way towards defining who we are and where we believe we fit in the world. They can be high points or low ones. Momentous occasions where the world felt like our oyster, or times when it felt like we would never be able to raise our head from the ground again.
Often, just when we think we’ve left those more difficult and challenging moments behind, they rear up before us. And in that moment we can feel like we’re right back where we started, struggling, a little lost and fearful of repeating that pattern from the past.
At times like these we can spiral, down into the depths of that place from where we came. Those attachments to the story of our past can be hard to break.
I have experienced this myself and it’s no fun. But in these moments, once I take a breath or two and bring myself back to the present, I remind myself of the following.
1. The past happened but it’s done. And I am different and stronger because it happened and I lived through it.
2. I will only repeat the patterns of the past if I don’t learn the lessons from the past. So I need to be honest with myself about why and how things happened and what my role was in that process. I am after all, not a victim of circumstance. I am not a passive participant in my own life.
3. Wallowing is fine. Sometimes it is even necessary to fully experience and ‘sit in’ the memory or situation and learn from it. But sooner or later I will need to get up, wash myself off and keep going. That part is definitely up to me. There is no ‘rescue’ from myself.
4. Sometimes the past stalks you just to let you know how far you’ve come. It’s a reminder of what you’ve learned and a sign the pattern no longer exists. It is simply a remnant from an older time. It is in those moments, when I finally realise the pattern is done, that I step into the light letting my past stalk by and disappear into the shadows behind me.
