Saturday, 26 May 2012

The Butterfly Effect

You may have heard of or even read the children's story, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", by Eric Carle. You know the one where the caterpillar starts out small and then goes on an eating spree day by day eating himself silly, eventually builds a cocoon around himself and hibernates and then emerges as a beautiful butterfly?

This story is one of  my daughter's favourite at the moment, so I could recite it to you word for word from the numerous times we have read it together. It did however, get me thinking that there was a lot more to the story than the tale of evolution from a caterpillar to a butterflly. The more thought I give it, the more it resonates with me in my adult life.

It's the story of how change is possible, change is inevitable and that change is something that can be a beautiful thing. It teaches one to be hungry for growth and change, to be adaptable in the face of adversity, that good things do in fact take time; that we should be patient, the wait is worth it and when the time is right, your wings will appear and you will be able to fly. Speaking of flying, that reminds me of a joke I once heard. "Why do angels fly?" "Because they take themselves lightly".

I guess the overall point I am trying to make is that change can be a very wonderful and beautiful thing. Something to be embraced upon, a realisation that change is a journey and not a destination. For some reason, we have become afraid of change, we fear it and run away from it, thinking it's okay I just want to stay the same. I am safe where I am. What I have is good enough.I couldn't possibly change. If I change  I will lose my friends blah blah blah. Insert whatever story you like here (  ______ ).  Or perhaps that's just me coming from my exerpience again?

The bare naked truth is that without change there is no growth, without growth there is no life and if there is no life, there is death. Death of a dream, death of a personality, death of possibility, death of potential. Nature teaches us that change is a beautiful thing. This is seen through not only our beautiful butterfly friends, but the changing of the seasons and I am certain there are many other examples we could identify if we took a moment to reflect. A mentor of mine, Joe Pane says "You're either green and growing or you're ripe and rotting".

Change can happen in an instant, if we choose to let it. There is no law written that we have to stay the same, keep the same beliefes, lead the same life. If you want a different outcome to the one that you are currently experiencing, I can guarantee that change will be the one certainty of you moving closer to your desired outcome.

My challenge to  you this week is to reflect on your current situation and identify what small changes you could make to start taking you down a different path, a path that would bring you closer to having what you want to have, to living life the way you want to be experiencing it.  Because, just like our butterfly friends, beautiful and wonderful things can emerge just when we think our lives are over .......



Sunday, 20 May 2012

There's no such thing as failure - only feedback

In this week's blog, I'd like you to toy with the idea that there's no such thing as failure, only feedback. What could you do if you applied this to your life? What could you potentially achieve? How could you embrace uncertainty even more so? What would happen if you knew that you could not fail, but simply receive feedback as to how not to do something? How different would your life be if you could get back up and give something another go?

Many of the greats out there - Thomas Eddison especially, lived by this philosophy. Imagine if Eddison gave up on his idea of creating the lightbulb after his first attempt because it was not successful? No, he was a man of tenacity and realised that each time he "failed"it was simply feedback that this wasn't the way to do something. He would tweak his design and have another go. He did this approximately 999 times. Talk about receiving awesome feedback.

I'm not sure about you, but failure used to be one of my biggest fears. I didn't want to appear as though I didn't know what I was doing or that I wasn't perfect. When I was taught this principle, it put a whole new spin on things for me. Í've begun to embrace a level of uncertainty that hasn't existed in my life before and am now excited knowing that whatever I do, I can't actually fail at it, because what is failure anyway?

According to the dictionary, it's the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. Hmm .... interesting. When we attempt to do something, how do we know how it will turn out any way? We don't. We only ever have an expectation or a pre-conceived idea of what's meant to happen. So, based on that as evidence, this whole "failure"thing doesn't really have a leg to stand on.

Most of the time we're scared to try new things without any evidence that we will fail, it's just a story we've told ourselves. We hold ourselves back saying "I could never do that", "Oh, I wouldn't be any good at that", based on little to no evidence.

This week I encourage you to attempt at least one thing that you've been afraid of failing at, and embrace it head on with your new-found belief that there's no such thing as failure..... only feedback. I'd love to hear from you how this experiment goes.

Saturday, 12 May 2012

Happiness..... it's an inside job

How often have you said to yourself, "I will be happy when  I have ...(insert random shiny object and/or event here) ? How often have you acquired the random shiny object and/or event and still felt a sense of  emptiness, unaccomplishment, disconnect? The so-called happiness you were expecting, just didn't arrive? Oh and according to the Buddhists, having an expectation is the definition of sufferring.

I know it sounds cliched, but I will say it again - "Happiness is a journey, not a destination", "Happiness is a way of life". I used to think it was all a big fat cliche too. Then a few things started to change. A big shift occurred in my life and my way of thinking when I was taught and realised, that we are 100% responsible for what happens in our life, that emotions are a choice, something that we do, not something that happens to us. Wow, what a steep learning curve that was. That's a whole blog post in itself!

You mean to say that I could no longer blame anyone else except me for not being happy? That I was solely responsible for the misery I was experiencing? That I was actually choosing drama and depression over peace and love? That the lack of love I felt in my relationship had to do with me? No way, it couldn't be so. It was all him, it couldn't be me!

The change wasn't instant, it was a process that took time and is still something I am working towards each and every day. Today, I wanted to take some time to share with you some of the things that I have begun to do that have helped me to change my perspective of happiness and it's source.

One of the first things is to get grateful for the things you do have. Remember a couple of posts ago, we discussed "where focus goes, energy flows?" So if we're focussing on being grateful for things in our lives, what do you think is going to start showing up? Yes, that's right  - good things, positive things. The best way that I have found to help with this is to keep a gratitude journal to write down what you're grateful for each day.

Just to digress for a moment, my journal used to be the source of negativity in my life. Anything bad that happened, guess where it got written? Yep, in my journal. Guess how I was always feeling when I wrote in my journal? Sad, angry, depressed, unloved..... the list of negativity goes on.  So I decided to change that. I went out and bought myself a beautiful new journal, which now has its own new rules. I am only allowed to write good stuff, positive stuff, happy stuff. Guess what I do now when I am feeling low, sad or blue - I go to my gratitude journal and read of the things that I am grateful for. And knowing that I am responsible for how I am feeling and that I have chosen a particular emotion, those "negative' feelings are showing up less often and for shorter periods of time.

The other thing that's had a huge impact, is making sure that I am taking time out each day to do something for myself to add to my "feeling great" bank. This could be something as simple as enjoying a cup of tea in bed, reading, going for a walk, writing, playing with my daughter, cooking. Notice that there is more than one source of activity that I can do to contribute towards generate feeling good?

The more activites that you can do in your day, no matter how small, will create a domino effect. Over time you will become more grateful and more aware of the wonderful things that you already have, and begin to choose to be happy, to come from a place of love and gratitude rather than expectation, blame and lack. Take it from someone who's been there - this is a journey well worth investing in.

Saturday, 5 May 2012

Unexpected Gifts

I was having a conversation with a friend earlier today, she was a bit distressed over something that had happened. On Wednesday her partner and her made a decision to put their house on the market as it was something that they'd been discussing for awhile and finally took the plunge and put it out there to the world. They're not in too much of a hurry to sell it, but figure it will sell when the time is right.

She came home from work yesterday to be told by her partner that an investor was coming to look at the house on Monday. She figures, cool, no worries, plenty of time tomorrow to do some cleaning and get the house looking immaculate. So this morning when her partner called her from work at 9.45am to tell her that the agent was coming over with the investor buyer at 11.30am, her initial reaction to him was "Hell no. No way. No. Not today". And hung up on him. She then took a deep breath and called him back to tell him to get someone to come and get their child so she could clean the house.

As we talked more about this, my friend revealed that her first reaction of hanging up came from a place of insecurity, of feeling judged, of things not being perfect. She said this feeling came with a lot of anxiety for her as she was so used to being prepared for things and didn't like having things sprung on her without notice. She didn't like to look as though she didn't have things under control.

Once she took a deep breath and a giant step back from the situation, she realised that the investor wasn't "judging"her, but merely coming to look at a house that they may or may not wish to purchase. The fact that this house was currently her home and a place she had a lot of pride in, was where ego came in and momentarily took over. She realised that the house didn't need to be immaculate and that she didn't need to scrub showers and toilets, clean windows, dust ceiling fans and clean scuff marks from walls. The investor was simply looking at a house.

When she took an even bigger step away from the situation, she began to be grateful that the investor was in fact coming today, as they'd actually saved her a whole day of "Cinderella-ing". She could now just do a couple of things that needed doing so the house was presentable. But she'd actually been given a gift of having time to spend with her daughter without constraints, deadlines and expectation.

How often do we go through our day to day lives reacting instanteously to situations before thinking them through, not taking the time to let things sink in before we react or to even see the gift that may be hidden? We operate from a place of knee-jerk reactions, with our actions, thoughts and words. Often times these can be to our our detriment. What if for a week, you were to take a deep breath, let things sink in and then respond?