A New Year, a New beginning…Where to start?

I am starting with a new title for my Newsletter. My Passionate Living Newsletter from now on will be titled “Woman to Woman”. Men are welcome of course but over the last few years my passion and focus has been more and more turning to ways I can be of help to women.

I am grateful to begin 2021 with you. I do my little part to lessen inequality in the world in the area that I know well personally and professionally… in Women’s lives. I help Women to bridge from where they are to where they want and deserve to be. I help them become unstuck, to uncover what is hidden and teach them how to heal what they find.

If you have looked at the state of the world lately you know the only possibility of shifting is for every woman to stand up and be counted. Every one of you has within gifts that are minimized and marginalized by faulty beliefs, conditioning and sometimes by women themselves for whatever reason.

And now let us welcome the New Year full of things that have never been –Rilke.

Never has Rilke’s phrase been so spot on as it is for 2021. We were set up for a huge change ready or not in 2020.

A New Year … “full of things that have never been”.

We get an opportunity to be in the middle of all of that, a merciful do over, a chance to make a course correction, to create a life that has never been.

It is not so much about the external changes we need to make. It is a given, we all need to make some. More importantly are the internal shifts necessary to grasp more of the bigger picture to realize that the only way to self-discovery and out of our boxes is through… not around or by avoidance, through, courageous ones, through the messy stuff that we would rather avoid.

I am not talking here about the cavalier way we make New Year’s Resolutions without real reflection as to how they fit into our life style and how likely we are to make room for the changes and give them priority when something has to give.

In my view both professionally and personally through my own messy journey that just like forgiveness change has about 4 or 5 stages depending on the starting point.

You know the forgiveness thing… when somebody in the pulpit says that you must turn the other cheek and forgive. Well you might want to but it can’t last or if so for about 4 days until you are up against the same person. It is built on sand not process. And being human most of us as in about 96% need process.

As for stages of “Change”

1. You might feel uneasy but deny that you need to shift and blame the situation on others
2. You want to change and keep thinking about it but part of you is waiting “until…until”. When… for the day you are going to feel like jumping off. Alas… that is unlikely to happen. First you bite the bullet and jump off …then you feel stronger.
3. You are immersed in thinking about it; maybe reading articles about it. I’m personally quite good during the research phase.
4. Now then we find ourselves at the do it or give up phase. Action!
5. There is something valid and comforting about the AA guidelines of 90 days. If we can go through the very important stage of being devoted to the change giving it a rightful place in our lives for 90 days, it is ours.

There will always be another threshold waiting to be crossed and if we don’t tack our desire and courage to the sticking place it will always be there haunting us, often late at night. Waiting, waiting for us to take a genuine risk: no halfhearted wishes or I’ll try, or until or maybe. This time we are faced with having the courage for a genuine Yes!

If we attempt to skip over, sidestep what we know in our essence that we have to do, the obstacle keeps showing up in one form or other, at one level or another until we face it. If we do not we commit self-sabotage.

There will be days when you have great hunger for your soul’s desire and move towards it with a directness that may surprise you.

Then you have the “not so much days” when the old familiar of discouragement and doubt slyly seep in to feed the hesitancy… Nothing seems to be going on, however more is happening than you realize and it is important.

Just like an herb, we do not pull it up to see if it’s rooting or growing. It needs the temporary darkness of the soil to germinate, to establish a solid foundation from which to catapult itself through the soil into the fullness of life. In your life as in nature, all change is accumulative, and constant. Reframe the “not so much” days…

You: just like the herb, plant the desire (the seed), water it (determination), and give it a little time for germination, until the sun beckons (motivation) it into life. (fruition). You too are being beckoned into a more expansive, abundant life.

We’ve had the temporary darkness … that part we are familiar with.

Now Commit!

The moment one definitely commits oneself,
Then providence moves too. A whole stream
Of events issues from the decision, raising in
One’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents,
Meetings and material assistances, which no
Man could have dreamt would have come his Way.
(W.H.Murray, Himalayan Expedition 1956)

The greatest challenge is to muster up the determination to actually begin. Every fiber of our being conspires to keep us boxed up in an illusion of safety.

Wanting a more meaningful life right now, and taking the first step, or starting the journey are two different things.

“We’re already in the New Age she said.
What does that mean? I said.
It means we can stop waiting
& start living, she said.
But after she left, I still waited a little more time
just to be safe.”
– (Brian Andreas, Traveling Light)

Be patient with yourself if you cannot run through open door right away, as well as have compassion for the weaknesses of others. Have you ever noticed that when you are discouraged with your own sins of commission or omission, there is a tendency to be more judgmental and impatient with those around us, sometimes even to blame them for our problems we’d rather not face. It is a time to be ‘mindful’ not only of what is going on with us, but knowing there is valuable feedback in how we treat others.

Our germinating time may start as confusion and murmurings, or flashes of insight of something that we sense, feel or know that at a deep level something is going on. In the middle of our process there is often a long slough that tests our courage, patience and resilience as we wrestle with discouragement and wonder why we took such a risk. Keep going! Keep going! It’s always darkest before dawn. The sun will come up.

May 2021 be a profoundly meaningful year for you.

Blessings:
Laura