struggle

Adding Struggle to Your Vision Board?

It’s popular in some circles to denigrate the New Age movement.
And I do think there are some things missing from its positive facing approach.

But what if we recognized that what we can do – and in fact are doing – is growing it into something else?

It’s useful to see what’s missing from something.
It’s helpful to recognize what’s not working.
That’s how we can understand what to add or change.
And it’s often more efficient to take what is useful and add to it, make it better, stronger, and more robust, than to start all over again.

I think that’s what we’ve been doing for years. I think that we’ve been evolving the New Age ideas and making them better. The work of people like Brene Brown on shame and vulnerability, Mark Manson on choosing your struggle, Bronnie Ware on regret and many, many more, add a welcome balance.

I’ve found it helpful to do my New Age inspired vision board, and in that process reflect and feel into not only the beautiful things I want to create, also into ‘whats getting in the way’ à la Brene Brown and ‘what struggles go along with them and are those the struggles I want?’ à la Mark Manson?

For example, if I want to be more successful, why am I not already? Am I scared that people won’t like me? Am I ashamed of myself somehow?

Also, I’ll have to work differently to be more successful. Is working differently something I want to do? Is that a struggle I want to have?

It’s not that any of these ideas are new. It’s more that I’d like to point out the progression… We’re evolving The New Age. We’ve been evolving The New Age. No need to push it away. We’ve been adapting it for years, and we can keep doing that until whatever we’re making is so different we don’t even recognize any “New Age” in it.

Brene Brown said something like hope is the knowing that when you fall you can get back up. This is a pretty powerful statement because it implies 1. that you’re consciously aware that falling is a part of the process, 2. that you’ve gotten back up and 3. that you’re willing to do it all again. Eyes open.
You accept the challenging along with the good.

I think we’re evolving the beautiful New Age ideas into a more robust from of hope. Hope that includes the challenges.

Beautiful creation. Hope added.

Happy Hoping,
Elena

Why is Everything Wrong?!

(video 6:33) I often have this dilemma when I’m facing my issues: once I start looking at what’s wrong, EVERYTHING seems wrong! It’s like the whole world seems sour. Negativity takes over. Yikes!

So how can I look at what’s wrong without that taking over everything? How can I look for negativity and not have negativity color everything?

For instance, there were somethings that I was uncomfortable with and I felt that it was a good idea to start admiting outloud that I was uncomfortable – sharing why I was unhappy with the people around me so that they knew what was going on with me. Sounds like a healthy thing to do, right? Except that I started realizing I was uncomfortable with A LOT of things… I started seeing discomfort everywhere! To the point that it was super exaggerated! Argh!

That wasn’t helpful either!

I didn’t have a solution to share, until after I made this video (see the next one). I wanted to share this with you to say if you’re feeling this way you have a friend!!!

Struggling During Meditation? Try No Expectations.

Are you struggling during meditation? Trying to calm your mind and it just isn’t working? Feel like the harder you try the less it works?

This is super frustrating! And pretty normal… I’ve been experiencing this with this in my own practice lately.

The trick with this one is to start with your intention firmly in place, “I intend to quiet my mind.” and then once you start meditating to drop your expectation and just to notice what is happening… notice what ever you mind is doing as you meditate.

Remember that if you’re busy thinking that you want to stop thinking… that you’re actually creating more thought! And what ever your intention is, the magic happens when you take the time to notice whatever is happening and just accept it with out trying to change it. If you let it, it will change on it’s own.

Try it and see how it goes. Feel free to comment below with your experiences or questions.

Breaking the Cycle of Struggle

breaking the cycle of struggleSometimes struggle is about doing the same thing over and over and getting no where. It’s like the wrong kind of perseverance. If we’re persevering to struggle, then all we’re really doing is putting lots and lots of energy into getting no where. It’s like we’re just stuck in the fight or the play. It’s a habit.

So what’s the difference between struggling, getting no where, and perseverance, that gets us somewhere?

Let’s stop for a moment and recognize that we’re talking about getting somewhere on the physical-mental-emotional plane and not on the spiritual plane where there is no where to go and nothing to do. I’m talking about getting out of the mental-emotional traps that I’ve created for myself. The endless loops of negativity that I keep myself stuck in and things like that. The fighting with myself that repeats over and over and changes insignificantly… berating myself, feeling unworthy, thinking that I should have done things better, feeling guilty, etc, etc, etc.

This is the fighting and wallowing and creating drama kind of struggle that goes no where and uses up lots of energy and focus. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

And when is that different from working with something and getting somewhere with it? When are we breaking the old patterns and creating something new?

An important question seems to be, where am I in relation to it?

Am I looking at it from the place that I usually do? Am I considering it from the normal perspective with the usual thoughts, feelings and postures? Am I standing and breathing the same way, thinking the same way and feeling the same way? That tends to promote the struggle, because nothing different than the old struggle is happening. This is perpetuating the cycle. Instead it’s when I am feeling it and thinking about it from different places that seems to make the difference. When I can stand differently and breathe differently that changes struggle to perseverance.

Can I step outside of the situation and look at it from a different perspective, like taking a bird’s eye view? Can I bring a totally new emotional landscape to it, preferably one that is expansive in some way? Can I think about it in a totally new way, with a new frame of mind? Can I breathe deeper or differently and break the physical patterning? Any one of these help shift the dynamic.

Taking Things Personally

Taking things personallyI’ve been writing a lot lately about struggle. As a world-class struggler, I have a lot to say about it apparently. I started with a long list of successful strategies for struggle. That was enlightening. I didn’t realize that I knew so many! Wow, do I know a lot of them. Wow, have I employed a lot of them!

One thing that I have begun to see with this exploration of struggle is that a big part of it relies on us insisting that things are personal. What do I mean by that? It definitely deserves some explanation as it has become a great thing for me to explore and understand!

Taking things personally works something like this: things that happen in my reality are about me. They effect me because I experience them and I hang on to that effect and turn it into something important and, well, personal – something about me, something pertaining to me. If a waitress brings me something that I didn’t order I can feel upset. I might be upset for any number of reasons that are all centered around me and my self-worth, like that bringing me the wrong order is insulting because she didn’t listen to me, she didn’t respect me enough to listen to what I was saying. Or bringing me the wrong order is a waste of my time. Now I have to sit here and wait for my meal to arrive a second time and I am hungry! Maybe my friends now have their food and either I have to watch them eat. How humiliating for me and uncomfortable! Or they have to wait for me and let their food get cold. How rude of me and of her!

This is taking things personally. This is making things personal.

Another way to look at this, that isn’t personal is to do things like think about the fact that the waitress is a complex being with a lot going on. Whatever happened to create the situation could have absolutely nothing to do with you. At all. She might have heard you just fine and then gotten the order mixed up with a similar one from the table next to you. It might not have had anything to do with her either… maybe the cook read the order wrong, told her the order for your table was ready and so she simply brought it to you.

This is all pretty silly when looked at like this. And yet it happens all the time. We take things personally. We assign meaning related to ourselves when we don’t need to. And this is important because we often assign feelings to it as well. That may seem fine when we feel good. What happens when we feel bad?

And this is all really silly if you think that things that happen in your life should be related to you, that they do have personal meaning. And maybe they do.

And what if they don’t?

Opens up a whole new vista doesn’t it?

Enjoy,

Elena