The moment the euphoria started to wear off was the moment I realised that my world record was not an ending, but a beginning, one that may take my entire life to understand. When I get stuck I tend to look back at my diving to see if what I am experiencing now was something that happened back then and invariably it is. This journey to understand my real life seems to mimic my world record with uncanny familiarity, which is odd considering to become the deepest woman in the world I had to literally lay my life on the line, something a board room rarely requires.
So what is it that makes the difference between an every day diver and one who pushes her own (if not the world’s) limits? What makes a successful diver and how can I take that into my real life ?
Diving is an odd combination of obsessive preparation and then concentrated action. To do a deep dive requires planning, preparation and thought. To dive deeper than most people requires an obsessive mind that continually goes over the plan, trying to find the weak spot, that thing I have not thought of that may stop me in my tracks. Yet, the moment my head sinks under the water all the stress and worry simply stops. The time is now to dive, to trust that I have done what was required and instead to be focused on this moment, attuned to what is happening so I can react in time. The moment my head sinks underwater I feel complete freedom and total power. I have no idea what will happen, yet I don’t try and control it, instead I relax, knowing I have done what I can, it was either enough or it wasn’t. Which is an attitude I battle to find back in the real world. It is as if underwater is the only place I am able to let go and have faith, the only place where I concede that my job is to control myself, not what can happen, so I focus on myself, on having the skills and the state of mind that will allow me to cope with any situation. When I dive, I feel prepared.
Have the last seven years been about finally realising that underwater I never try and control the circumstance, instead I have faith in myself and the universe and so I work with the circumstances I get ? Do I really spend so much time trying to control everything outside of myself that I never do the work that allows me to feel in control of myself and so able to manage anything ?
Is that the lesson I have been missing all this time ? To simply let go control, have faith and focus inwards on creating myself ?
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Could all Our Stress and Overwhelmed Feeling be a Symptom of being Faithless ?
After a long year I find myself reverting to one of my favourite enlightenment / empowerment) intentions, flow, or rather the lack there-of. Around me people are tired, overwhelmed and just done with the year. I feel it myself and it has started me thinking about how I experience life (a consistent theme of mine that normally unearths interesting revelations). The question I find myself asking is why are we all so stressed and overwhelmed? What are we doing ‘wrong’ ? There I sit, doing my best to manage my life, trying to work out all the possible outcomes, obsessing about which will be best for me, which worst and trying to be prepared for anything at any time, normal right ? We prize people who can ‘make things happen’, people who don’t sit back and just accept their fate, but create it. What no-one mentioned is how exhausting it is to control every aspect of life and then, just when it all seems to be working according to ‘the plan’, life throws the ever predictable curve ball.
Looking more closely at this pattern of supreme control I was struck by the sheer futility of it all. There is only so much I can do and all the extra worrying that I put in so very rarely affects the outcome of an event. Actually, now that I come to think of it, those days where I let go and relax seem to be the days that work better. It is almost as if I have the entire thing the wrong way round – as if my job is not to ‘make’ things happen but instead to set things in motion and then go with the flow. All that extra energy and stress I obsessively throw at ‘creating’ just seems to get in the way. I miss things as they don’t ‘fit’ what I am expecting or needing to create. It is almost as if I need to have some faith. And there it was, the word that was missing, faith.
Faith is not a word that sits well in my landscape. I link it to serious religious types and religion is something I walked away from a long time ago. Yet, the more I thought about it the more exhausting this faithless life became, exhausting and futile. The idea of letting go and letting someone or something else take the load became more and more appealing. I could imagine myself living with faith - no longer having to be in control of every moment of every day, trusting that the universe was on my side, trusting that events that as a human I judge to be awful (and so actively avoid) are actually there for a reason and will turn out ok. The more I thought about it (and watched my fellow faithless struggle on) the more I saw how the faithless spend their lives trying to control every moment, caught in an endless struggle to avoid what we judge to be suffering and create what we judge to be awesome and happy. We take on the entire load of creating our lives, worrying about everything thing all the time, never putting the load down or trusting anything or anyone to assist us. The end result ? Extreme stress and finally emotional or physical breakdown.
I am not advocating sitting back and letting the universe do everything! No, rather I think there is a balance to be found, similar to the balance I found in diving. To complete a dive there needed to be a time for planning and thought and then a time where you put that down and just dived, trusting that you could handle whatever came up and as importantly, accepting the consequences without judgment. To dive well you need to be able to live in the present and not be obsessed with the past or stressing about a future that may never happen. Underwater was a place of complete freedom and amazingly total empowerment, which is really bizarre considering that cave diving is one of the most dangerous environments in the world where you have no control of anything other than yourself.
Is that the lesson ? That we spend so much time trying to control everything outside of ourselves we never do the work that allows us to feel in control of ourselves and so able to manage anything ?
What would happen if I could just let go and allow the universe to take some of the load ? What would happen if I stopped insisting that the answers in my head were the only answers and became open to what was in my present ?
Looking more closely at this pattern of supreme control I was struck by the sheer futility of it all. There is only so much I can do and all the extra worrying that I put in so very rarely affects the outcome of an event. Actually, now that I come to think of it, those days where I let go and relax seem to be the days that work better. It is almost as if I have the entire thing the wrong way round – as if my job is not to ‘make’ things happen but instead to set things in motion and then go with the flow. All that extra energy and stress I obsessively throw at ‘creating’ just seems to get in the way. I miss things as they don’t ‘fit’ what I am expecting or needing to create. It is almost as if I need to have some faith. And there it was, the word that was missing, faith.
Faith is not a word that sits well in my landscape. I link it to serious religious types and religion is something I walked away from a long time ago. Yet, the more I thought about it the more exhausting this faithless life became, exhausting and futile. The idea of letting go and letting someone or something else take the load became more and more appealing. I could imagine myself living with faith - no longer having to be in control of every moment of every day, trusting that the universe was on my side, trusting that events that as a human I judge to be awful (and so actively avoid) are actually there for a reason and will turn out ok. The more I thought about it (and watched my fellow faithless struggle on) the more I saw how the faithless spend their lives trying to control every moment, caught in an endless struggle to avoid what we judge to be suffering and create what we judge to be awesome and happy. We take on the entire load of creating our lives, worrying about everything thing all the time, never putting the load down or trusting anything or anyone to assist us. The end result ? Extreme stress and finally emotional or physical breakdown.
I am not advocating sitting back and letting the universe do everything! No, rather I think there is a balance to be found, similar to the balance I found in diving. To complete a dive there needed to be a time for planning and thought and then a time where you put that down and just dived, trusting that you could handle whatever came up and as importantly, accepting the consequences without judgment. To dive well you need to be able to live in the present and not be obsessed with the past or stressing about a future that may never happen. Underwater was a place of complete freedom and amazingly total empowerment, which is really bizarre considering that cave diving is one of the most dangerous environments in the world where you have no control of anything other than yourself.
Is that the lesson ? That we spend so much time trying to control everything outside of ourselves we never do the work that allows us to feel in control of ourselves and so able to manage anything ?
What would happen if I could just let go and allow the universe to take some of the load ? What would happen if I stopped insisting that the answers in my head were the only answers and became open to what was in my present ?
Monday, November 21, 2011
Who Owns Your Life ?
I was watching NatGeo, a short program on the Inuit in Greenland and how their lifestyle of subsidence hunting is being changed by the Western way of life. All well and good, but not really relevant as I sit here in my nice lounge watching DSTv, until right at the end when a former hunter finally gave up and got a job because “he could not pay his bills, his rent, his phone bill and pay for food”. That simple statement opened a door in my mind and I found myself asking the question, who owns my life ? It seemed absurd to me that people who had never been beholden to anyone all of a sudden could not carry on their old way of life because now they had rent to pay. When I look at my life I realise I don’t own it, the bank does. If I stop working I cannot survive, I don’t own my house, I don’t own my car and even if I did, I could not run it as I would need money for petrol, now horses, they can feed on the grass, for free (more or less). I have spent my entire life striving to own it and be independent, yet if the Spar shut down, how would I eat ? How would I survive without money ? I don’t think I (or anyone else) could ?
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The Art of Detachment
My passion is to be an explorer whose sole job is to create myself - independently of what other people think, of societies labels and expectations and any other definition that tries to box me and create limits. It is enough that my identity has a PhD in creating limits. Enlightenment has created a lasting inspiration for me on this journey and one of the key principles in enlightened being is the concept of detachment, which is not something that comes naturally to us human beings. Our identities love being attached to ‘stuff’ and outcomes that we invent and then sustain in the safety of our minds, throwing enormous amounts of energy at the images and stories of how it will be. Hardly surprising then when we are devastated when we get a different outcome.
DETACHMENT IS NOT POSSIBLE WHEN WE CHOOSE NOT TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT!
This idea scares me (or at least my identity) as it makes living detached (or as I prefer to call it, in Acceptance) a remarkably simple thing. Yes, changing the habit of a lifetime is not easy, but I think I may work on just being in the Present for a while and letting go of the stories that project me into a future that does not yet exist. The idea of being Present excites me…I get to experience all the abundance in this moment, things I would normally not even be aware of because I am so focused on something that might never be.
What could you do today to spend just one hour in the present moment ? How could you move from being part of the stories your Identity spins in your head to being an observer instead ?
DETACHMENT IS NOT POSSIBLE WHEN WE CHOOSE NOT TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT!
This idea scares me (or at least my identity) as it makes living detached (or as I prefer to call it, in Acceptance) a remarkably simple thing. Yes, changing the habit of a lifetime is not easy, but I think I may work on just being in the Present for a while and letting go of the stories that project me into a future that does not yet exist. The idea of being Present excites me…I get to experience all the abundance in this moment, things I would normally not even be aware of because I am so focused on something that might never be.
What could you do today to spend just one hour in the present moment ? How could you move from being part of the stories your Identity spins in your head to being an observer instead ?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Creating the Right Relationships
How different the world would be, if we gave other people permission to live their lives without requiring them to be bound irrevocably to us. When did we get taught to collect people and hold onto them so tight that we never let go ? Even when it would be best for everyone to go seperate ways... creating space that is now available for someone new. Yet we hold on with some idea about endless loyalty, not understanding that relationships are supposed to be two way streets, things that add value to your life as well as the other person's.
Even more odd, we create relationships with the wrong people in the first place, people who do not think like us and sometimes, do not even see us, it is almost as if we got taught somewhere to grab onto anyone who comes along and then do whatever it takes (sacficing ourselves if necessary) to keep them. Then, after we put in all this work, we wait in frustrated expectation for the person in front of us to do the same thing, repay our sacrifice and start to notice us and fulfill our needs, just like we fulfilled theirs. When they don't, we don't move on, no, we stay and try harder, slowly loosing ourselves and our belief in people.
What would happen if instead of filling our lives with people we instead carefully selected the people we want to share our lives with and in that selection process, we actually were honest about who we are and what we want (from life and people) ? Yes, we may 'scare' away a lot, but the one's who stay will be worth spending time with.
Even more odd, we create relationships with the wrong people in the first place, people who do not think like us and sometimes, do not even see us, it is almost as if we got taught somewhere to grab onto anyone who comes along and then do whatever it takes (sacficing ourselves if necessary) to keep them. Then, after we put in all this work, we wait in frustrated expectation for the person in front of us to do the same thing, repay our sacrifice and start to notice us and fulfill our needs, just like we fulfilled theirs. When they don't, we don't move on, no, we stay and try harder, slowly loosing ourselves and our belief in people.
What would happen if instead of filling our lives with people we instead carefully selected the people we want to share our lives with and in that selection process, we actually were honest about who we are and what we want (from life and people) ? Yes, we may 'scare' away a lot, but the one's who stay will be worth spending time with.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
When last did a course or book create a lasting change ?
The biggest frustration I have had over the last decade or so (which is how long I have been on this journey), has been the fact that no matter what course I do or what book I read, when the novelty has worne off, I still feel trapped and in the same place I was before (admittedly now a tad poorer). I accumulated this wealth of knowledge but I had no cooking clue how to apply it in my day to day life, which meant no clue how to create the change I was so desperately looking for. It was almost as if the world to which I was looking for answers really had no clue itself. It certainly did not want me to figure that out and it especially did not want me to break away from the herd and find my freedom.
The further down this path I go the more I realise how trapped in illusion we are and the biggest illusion was the thought that I had to ‘find myself’ before I could change my life. Not that anyone could tell me how to, so I watched what other people were doing... and became fascinated byt the enthusiasm people applied to this single task (not to mention decades of their lives). My problem was that no-one seemed to be actually finding themselves, instead they seemed to be lost in the process - always moving but never getting anywhere. And then, assuming that they actually did finally find ‘themselves’, they were now right back where they started. In fact, all that hard won knowledge was now nothing more than intersting, they still had to do the hard work to create the person they actually want to be.
I started to take a real good look at the books (and courses and guru's) and realised why I was so frustrated - not one gave me a tried and tested practice that I could use to create the change that they expounded with enthusiasm. I was trapped in world of theory when what I wanted was something real. WIthout fail, every book told me how it would be, never how I could get there!
All the experts, all the courses, all the books and not one said, just do it! Stop faffing and go out and create yourself! Stop looking for an answer from everywhere else, the only place you will find your answer is inside yourself. Stop looking for the reasons and events that created you – who you are is who you are, you can not go back and change a thing but you can stop procrastinating and finally accept what is and most importantly accept responsibility for where you are.
Not one said you are here! This is what you created and it does not matter that you created it unconsciously – it is what it is! The only way to change it, is to start CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSING. The only way is forward and that requires you to start Living! Live Consciously, Live Enlightenment, Live Empowered...but LIVE!!!
And so I stopped buying into the illusion. I stopped living Hope’ium and created the practice I call Living Enlightenment. It allows me to let go of the past and create who I want to be in this moment, for myself! Living Enlightenment allows me to Live Empowered, even when the world falls apart and the carefully crafted illusion I have that I have some control evaporates...because with Living Enlightenment I practice being able to choose who I want to be in every and any moment of every and any day.
I may never become a butterfly, but in a world of caterpillars I choose to be the best caterpillar I can be!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
The Power of a Label – Attachment vs Acceptance
This year seems to be about creating freedom, which first requires that I understand what I mean when I choose to be free. The more I work with this specific Enlightenment Intention (Free) the more I understand that for me, freedom is about letting go of identifying with the labels I live. To live empowered (and so to live enlightenment) means I get to choose when and what I identify with. It also means I can stop defending and protecting the labels I have...which seems to be an integral part of my being and the biggest contributor to my state of suffering. What do I mean by a label ? Well in my mind I define myself as a superior business analyst, which means that is something I have to defend and continually see reflected back at me by the peoplei work with. The problem is that this is just one of the labels that define me. For the most part, I don't even see the label that is wreaking havoc in my world. Work is the perfect example.
Over the last 15 years I have established a reputation (in my own head naturally) for excellence and over performance. So now that I find myself in a large corporate I am battling. Firstly I am no longer visible, secondly, my success is integrally linked to the performance (or more often than not, non-performance) of people I can not influence. My frustration has subsequently hit all time highs and with that frustration comes an extreme effort to be heard and create change.... which is always (and I have 15 years of experience creating this) dramatically self destructive. The less I am acknowledged and heard, the harder I push back .. the more drama and conflict I create.... and so we spiral down and down and down until finally I can not cope anymore and fed up I leave and start all over again...in a new place that this time will be filled with the right people – people who understand, who are high performers (now their is a contradiction of note, an A-type personality that bonds and cares about the well being of others), who will create that safe place of belonging where I can blossom. Yes, fairy tales are alive and well in my psyche which is quite a depressing thought after over 20 years in the so-called ‘adult’ world.
To cut a long story short, at the end of all this I am left with the feeling that I am really schizophrenic (or is it just multiple personality disorder?) because it feels like someone else is creating all this and I am an innocent bystander who is left to clean up the mess. I know there is something I have to let go of, I just can’t see it and if I can’t see it, I can’t stop holding on!!
So when well meaning friends and confidantes tell me I need to leave, that this place does not appreciate me, it is not worth it, I stay. My answer is not in escaping. We live in a world where it is to easy to run away from our problems and distract ourselves with a new place, a new challenge (a new significant other). I need to stay right here and confront this part of me. I need to live in the flames and see what happens if I refuse to give in, if I refuse to live this. So here I sit, refusing to jump ship, just breathing and allowing my world to flow, refusing to give up and escape to another job.
There is another reason for staying - the corporate world is the one place that still swallows me up whole. It is the one place where I can not seem to Live Empowered. My world record create a moment where I was able to escape being invisible and less. For the first time in my life I was truly empowered. That lable of deepest was something I choose for myself, something I fought to bring into being. It was the first taste I had of freedom and an experience I wanted in all areas of my life. Which is why I created Living Conscious Enlightenemetn.
Now at work, I am finally starting to get a glimpse of what it will take to recover my power and my first step is going to be a hard one - to stop identifying with the labels I carry with me into work. Which means creating awareness in every moment so that I can stop just being a collection of unconscious habits. I need to own the me that created this mess and start to slowly release her.
It is with relief that I can fall into the process of Conscious Enlightenment and with my own coach (there are just some days I can not escape my own mind by myself and need an unbiased observer to ask me the ‘obvious’ questions) I am going to focus on what it is I want to create - because it is not enought to know what I don't want. You can not create a negative and if I want to live something new, I have to know what that new is so that I can start to make choices that create that. Only and only in that process will the old disappear.
It is going to be hard to ignore the temptation to search for the labels that are creating this drama and instead work on disinvesting and disconnecting and creating consciously who it is I want to be. But, I suspect that the labels will show themselves when the time is right and when I am able to let them go. Until then, my focus is going to be on stepping into my power and consciously creating me. That way if it all goes pear shaped at least I made the choice - it was not something that happened to me. I find my life easier to accept when the consequences are a result of the choices I MADE! I can accept being wrong, but when someone or something else chooses for me and I have to pay the price, then I am not such a graceful looser.
How do you escape the trap of being ? Start to consciously choose and trust that you will find the baggage along the way. Anything else is a trap, keeping you from going forward, keeping you from your power to create your own life and your own experiences.
Over the last 15 years I have established a reputation (in my own head naturally) for excellence and over performance. So now that I find myself in a large corporate I am battling. Firstly I am no longer visible, secondly, my success is integrally linked to the performance (or more often than not, non-performance) of people I can not influence. My frustration has subsequently hit all time highs and with that frustration comes an extreme effort to be heard and create change.... which is always (and I have 15 years of experience creating this) dramatically self destructive. The less I am acknowledged and heard, the harder I push back .. the more drama and conflict I create.... and so we spiral down and down and down until finally I can not cope anymore and fed up I leave and start all over again...in a new place that this time will be filled with the right people – people who understand, who are high performers (now their is a contradiction of note, an A-type personality that bonds and cares about the well being of others), who will create that safe place of belonging where I can blossom. Yes, fairy tales are alive and well in my psyche which is quite a depressing thought after over 20 years in the so-called ‘adult’ world.
To cut a long story short, at the end of all this I am left with the feeling that I am really schizophrenic (or is it just multiple personality disorder?) because it feels like someone else is creating all this and I am an innocent bystander who is left to clean up the mess. I know there is something I have to let go of, I just can’t see it and if I can’t see it, I can’t stop holding on!!
So when well meaning friends and confidantes tell me I need to leave, that this place does not appreciate me, it is not worth it, I stay. My answer is not in escaping. We live in a world where it is to easy to run away from our problems and distract ourselves with a new place, a new challenge (a new significant other). I need to stay right here and confront this part of me. I need to live in the flames and see what happens if I refuse to give in, if I refuse to live this. So here I sit, refusing to jump ship, just breathing and allowing my world to flow, refusing to give up and escape to another job.
There is another reason for staying - the corporate world is the one place that still swallows me up whole. It is the one place where I can not seem to Live Empowered. My world record create a moment where I was able to escape being invisible and less. For the first time in my life I was truly empowered. That lable of deepest was something I choose for myself, something I fought to bring into being. It was the first taste I had of freedom and an experience I wanted in all areas of my life. Which is why I created Living Conscious Enlightenemetn.
Now at work, I am finally starting to get a glimpse of what it will take to recover my power and my first step is going to be a hard one - to stop identifying with the labels I carry with me into work. Which means creating awareness in every moment so that I can stop just being a collection of unconscious habits. I need to own the me that created this mess and start to slowly release her.
It is with relief that I can fall into the process of Conscious Enlightenment and with my own coach (there are just some days I can not escape my own mind by myself and need an unbiased observer to ask me the ‘obvious’ questions) I am going to focus on what it is I want to create - because it is not enought to know what I don't want. You can not create a negative and if I want to live something new, I have to know what that new is so that I can start to make choices that create that. Only and only in that process will the old disappear.
It is going to be hard to ignore the temptation to search for the labels that are creating this drama and instead work on disinvesting and disconnecting and creating consciously who it is I want to be. But, I suspect that the labels will show themselves when the time is right and when I am able to let them go. Until then, my focus is going to be on stepping into my power and consciously creating me. That way if it all goes pear shaped at least I made the choice - it was not something that happened to me. I find my life easier to accept when the consequences are a result of the choices I MADE! I can accept being wrong, but when someone or something else chooses for me and I have to pay the price, then I am not such a graceful looser.
How do you escape the trap of being ? Start to consciously choose and trust that you will find the baggage along the way. Anything else is a trap, keeping you from going forward, keeping you from your power to create your own life and your own experiences.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)