Happy New Year!
It’s been a few weeks since you have heard from me and that’s because I was doing my best to be present for my kids over the holidays and to take some time to reflect and recharge. I had some time this holiday season to do some DEEP soul searching. 2015 was a year of extraordinary growth and change for me. I want to share with you some of the lessons that shook me to my core and allowed me some beautiful expansion. Some of them are tough to hear, but if you really let them sink in, take them to heart and open to their message, I promise you, light and love will be your constant companions.
So here, in random order and with a certain unorganized charm, are my 10 greatest lessons of 2015:
- You aren’t mad at them for what they keep doing, you’re mad at yourself for what you keep allowing.
- You cannot out run your truth. You may stay a few laps ahead for a time but your truth will always catch up.
- You’re capable of anything you’re willing to google.
- You will be a better person if you assume that everyone you encounter has been sent to teach you something. That rude customer service rep? A messenger from God sent to teach you unwavering patience.
- Most people are unwilling to look in the mirror. Self-awareness is uncomfortable. But it leads to miracles. Only the truly courageous strive for self-awareness. So be one of the courageous.
- You cannot expect extraordinary change if you aren’t willing to be extraordinarily changed. So many people go on and on about what they don’t like about their lives, what they want instead, yet they stay paralyzed and stuck because they fear the work that change asks of us.
- Everything is neutral until you assign an emotion to it. And you’ll be happier if you assign a good one. Even when something happens that brings you to your knees — a lost job, a lost relationship — you can breathe good into it, or you can breathe pain. Breathe good.
- When people show you their true colors, believe them. Your intuition never lies. You may choose to keep them in your life, but you then give up the right to be surprised and disappointed in their behavior.
- You are always in choice. Always. Even if you decide to do nothing, you have chosen. And that gift of always being in choice means you and you alone are responsible for your life and circumstances. So when you say you can’t possibly leave your job, the truth is you could. You could leave and downsize, or live in your tree house or whatever. The point is, you should never dis-empower yourself by uttering the words “I don’t have a choice.” You do. Always.
- This is a biggie. Happiness Isn’t an absence of pain. It’s a recognition that something greater than pain is what defines us.
Shit happens. If you’re alive, shit will continue to happen.
Happiness isn’t the opposite of pain, it’s an element of it. We need the pain because we learn by contrast. Without pain we have no earthly way of knowing when the brilliance of bliss has finally touched us.
This is why we need the pain. Your goal isn’t to eliminate pain. It’s to learn from it. And then to keep the scales ever tipped towards the other side.
A mood is not a reality. A bad hour doesn’t actually equal a bad day.
So many people say they aren’t happy. This broad blanket statement of “I’m not happy” means, in reality, that what they aren’t happy with is their job or their mate. When one part of your life is unhappy, that’s just pain giving you information on how you can tip the scales. Pain is your partner. But you’re the greater shareholder. You have to make the final decision.
And sadly, do you know what most people decide to do with pain? Stay in it.
You’re not unhappy. If you’re living and laughing and have one friend and see the sun, you’re not unhappy. You just have a choice to make about one or two areas of your life.
One situation needn’t ever dictate your universal state of being.
And with that, I wish you a gorgeous, blessed and self-aware 2016. =)