When the Unwanted Happens. A Different Perspective.

June 14, 2019

We live in a culture that really promotes having a “success model” that is based on hard work, pushing and promoting. And though there is talk about embracing the storms of life, most of us have been enculturated to resist the storms of life, to lament about the wrongness of ourselves because of something that’s happening in our life.

If you’re a follower of The Law of Attraction, this can end up being a license to beat yourself up, because “you attracted the unwanted” by your thoughts.

The following came to me recently:

“What if, the unwanted that happens in your life, is never, ever meant for your punishment, because you’ve attracted it? What if, the unwanted that’s appearing is meant for your awakening?”

What do I mean by this? What if the things that show up in your life, that you don’t want, are actually there to reveal to you a place within you that needs your attention?

True freedom is not the absence of unwanted happening but the conscious awareness with which you move through something. Even if it appears you’re moving through something with very little grace and ease, but you have more awareness, this is actually a huge step forward.

It really comes back to self-acceptance. When we resist the unwanted, we’re actually creating more resistance, which makes it much harder to find relief.

But how do we come to a place of even being open to the idea that the unwanted is meant for our awakening?

Practice, Practice, Practice.

Here’s a personal example:

At least 6 years ago, I had the idea for a book to write. Well, I spent the next 4 years, thinking about it now and then, and never taking action on it in a physical way. (Sitting down and writing it). I would find myself judging myself for this. I’d tell myself I’m sabotaging myself in some way. These thoughts were so unwanted, yet so prevalent. These thoughts were exacerbated by reading things about people writing a book in 30 days. I mean I was thinking about writing a book for years.

I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “Big Magic” and I read the part where she talks about ideas come to us and move on. If we don’t act on an idea it can leave us and move on to someone else. As much as I love her work, I found that this left me feeling bad once again. I went further down the road of self punishment because I hadn’t taken any action on it.  The beating continued.

I tapped on these unwanted, self punishing thoughts which aloud me to make the conscious decision that it didn’t matter if someone else wrote a book like I had in mind.My personality would likely have a different perspective than someone else’s and the perfect people that are meant to read the book that comes through me, would come.

I relaxed into this and ironically (yet of course) within a few month’s I felt inspired and excited to hire a book writing coach who really helped me to write the book by creating an outline and then a schedule for the writing of it.

I was ready to write it and I did with incredible ease.

It was Elizabeth’s words that really summoned up unwanted thoughts not to punish me, but to help me come to a new, far more empowering perspective. This really awakened me.

Since then, it’s been through multiple edits and it’s reached the final line editor, who is correcting all of the punctuation and reference checking.

This process has taken me 6 years (so far) from the moment the idea came to me.

The other day when I was mountain biking the thought came to me to ask some people who have been in the life the last year or so, to write a blurb or testimonial for the book. These people were not in my life 6 years ago or even 2 years ago. Now they may or may not chose to do this, but I realized that this is actually unfolding in perfect timing.

If I’d chosen to believe that this idea would move on from me, never to return, I would have never actually written it.

Now I’m surrendering again to the idea of the perfect timing for its publishing, as the final edits are being done.

I was facing the unwanted self judgment around procrastinating and the thought that I must be blocking this from coming into being. These thoughts served to make me believe that I needed to once again, unblock myself from being stuck, yet now I see it so differently. Feeling the resistance and self-judgment was not meant to lay me out, by punishing myself for being lazy or self sabotaging, it was meant to help me find a new perspective that is self supporting.

The old adage, “Question everything” is actually quite good for us to do for ourselves. Just because someone says something, doesn’t have to make it true for us. The beauty is we get to decide, and just because I’m writing this and giving a potentially different perspective around what appears to be unwanted, doesn’t mean you have to believe this either.

You get to decide for you. You get to practice finding ways to see things that supports you.

So…

What if, nothing ever comes into your experience to punish you because you’re thinking about something in the wrong way?
(This really takes a lot of pressure off of me.)

What if everything that comes into your experience is always there to awaken you a little more each time? 
(This feels much more supportive.)

How different could things be for you if this could be true for you?
(You get to chose.)

Just a perspective to consider and see how it fits for you.

Until Next Time,

Marti

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