thoughts become things

The Year of the Heart: Making Friends with Uncertainty

The soul-driven life is an internally driven life.

It leaves space where the ego demands decision and it makes decisions and takes risks where the ego says drag your feet or be responsible. It is intuitive. It is powerful. It is playful and spontaneous, without being impulsive. It is creative, with a drive to press the edges of growth. It is organic yet ordered. It is trailblazing. And it is uncertain.

The uncertainty of the soul-driven life is its animation because it lives in a constant state of potential. That is, what is capable of being and becoming, what is possible rather than what is. Though the soul is never static, its natural state is peace and present. To make friends with uncertainty is not to be in a constant state of frenetic activity or ignorance. It’s more of living in the paradox of motion and stillness inside and out at the same time.

So what’s the point of making friends with uncertainty?

For those dedicated to the intentional creation of their life, their business, and the evolution of themselves it is the eye of the storm, the power center of creating.

Our first impulse when we learn about our ability to create our lives is to want to control it. You mean I can have “this?” Great, here’s what, where, when, and how. And take this thing over here away. Now show it to me so I know I can have it. But the greatest possibilities cannot happen from there. It’s stifling to the soul.

Within uncertainty is the power of real change, the highest possibility. Coupled with intention, they are the building blocks of the Universe. Like an artist who doesn’t know the outcome, but starts chiseling, painting, dancing, writing, mortaring, dreaming, and imagining with an idea in mind, shifting with the idea as the art emerges from their hands, so too, you create your soul-driven life.

It’s uncomfortable. We’ve all been in conversations with someone who is uncomfortable with space, or been the one who is uncomfortable leaving space. But have you also enjoyed conversations where the space just added to the flow of conversation? Every moment wasn’t filled with words. You could just be and experience the person all the more. The space only added to the connection.

Likewise, to make friends with uncertainty stokes the connection with yourself and the Universe at large for creating all that you intend. Enjoy the uncertainty of the space in the “conversation.”

© 2012 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.

Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com.

Gratitude Integrated

Gratitude Integrated - Shelley HawkinsOne of the paradoxes of transformation is that gratitude for both what you love and the presence of what you don’t love are both a way of saying, Yes, to Life. The paradox being that acceptance, like forgiveness, is not condoning the condition; it is a way of evolving through it.

Gratitude is like driving your stake deep in the ground and saying, “this is where I stand.” You are validating your very existence, your cosmic necessity to and with the whole, and your ability to create within it. Your gratitude says, “Yes, I’m willing to participate with Life with my unique genius from what I know and where I am right now.” It becomes the attraction for all that you desire and the transformation of what you do not.

That is not where I started with gratitude. Like most, I suppose, I knew to count my blessings, which evolved into disciplined thankfulness and the power of a positive attitude. A few years later came energy, gratitude lists to build my gratitude muscles, which I still use at times, and other tools and disciplines I use to keep it flowing.

But it became most fun when it penetrated the surface, went beyond what I wanted to attract, beyond my disciplines, and became an integrated way of being—not perfection, mind you—being. Rachel Naomi Remen said, “Those who nurture the hidden wholeness in those around them become the architects of a new world.” Gratitude acknowledges the invisible—or not so invisible—connections between all that is.

Lynn McTaggart among others has brought to fore, through her 20 years of research bridging science and spirituality, the reality of the connection between us and all things.

The richest of gratitude affirms this connection and the architects we are for a new world as well as new selves.

Gratitude nurtured then becomes your path of authenticity, of creative intention, and of wholeness for yourself and a new world.

© 2011 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.

Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com.

When the Edges You’ve been Living in Just Won’t Do

“A single insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”
~from Whatever it Takes

I was listening to a conscious writers symposium the other day and was reminded that there are infinite ways to say, to teach, to convey a single idea. There have been eons of people speaking truth, teaching the ideas I teach, coach and write about and there will be eons more.

Mike Dooley talked about questioning the validity of his well-known Notes from the Universe asking the question all of us ask of ourselves, “Who am I to… teach this, share this, coach this, write this, build this, heal this, receive this…” And how would he continue to come up with original work? In the midst of questioning himself, he had an epiphany one day that there are as many ways to talk about his passionate subject as there are stars in the galaxy.

He would never run out of ways to talk about it nor would people run out of the need to be reminded in this human experience. Each of us knows the value of that regular—daily—inspiration, being fed and reminded of what is true and what is not, is essential for growing ourselves.

“Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.” ~Mark Twain

I hear many people at a place of challenging their “edges,” challenging the way they’ve thought of themselves up until now, how they have perceived of their value, the age-old fear of calling the bluff of their own “edge” and the all-or-nothing thinking that goes with it. The earth is not flat and neither are you.

Their huge life transitions challenge relationships, who they have been in relationship, who they have been (and not been) to themselves. They’ve reached the edge of growth their career can give them and their restlessness, even if they haven’t recognized it, calls them to draw from a deeper part of themselves, to work that doesn’t just have meaning, but comes from their own meaning.

They’ve reached “the edge” of where their current relationship with money can take them. They are being challenged to relate to their own value in a way that sheds the identities, hiding and coping mechanisms they’ve been living within. The growth or change they desire, that they need, in their businesses requires them to transform themselves and tap into a deeper expression of themselves.

In order to have the wonderful relationship they desire or to evolve the one(s) they are in, to start, grow or reconnect with the divine idea of their business, to cultivate vibrant health, to see an ideal or project through to a brilliant completion, to relate to money and feel supported financially to make the decisions and seize the opportunities before them, the edges of who they have been, just won’t do.

Here are a few tips for challenging your edge instead of staying stuck (or “busy”—same thing) going for another round of the same patterns and experiences:

  1. Change your relationship (and definitions) with uncertainty and safety, which frees you from paralyzation. Your old definitions will keep you where you are and just won’t take you into your next evolution, the soul-driven life.
  2. Shift your priorities for change from external to internal. Your external world is a reflection of your inner world. That gives you the power of change. You change your external world forever with what you transform from within. More than just a way of thinking, you’re changing the energetic patterns you live from.
  3. Learn the true art of intention not as mere motivational goals, but as a dance with your soul and the power of the Universe. Set powerful intentions both for what you are done with and for what you are determined to create.
  4. Remember that creating your life is not the same as controlling your life. Living consciously is engaging the dance with Life that brings together outcomes beyond your imagination.
© 2011 Shelley Hawkins, The Self Connection™. All Rights Reserved.

Your requests for reproducing this material in part or in whole are welcomed. Please note that without written permission from the author, this article may not be reproduced in part or in whole. Your requests receive prompt response at info@theselfconnection.com.

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Favorite Quotes

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth. — Blaise Pascal