There are invariably going to be times when we find ourselves in the corridor. No doors are opening. No answers are forthcoming. Nothing seems to be moving and we’re just sitting there in the unknown. It’s that tunnel of uncertainty.
There’s often at least one area of our lives where we feel we’re not where we’d like to be. Perhaps we’re struggling with our job; no matter what we do, we don’t seem to be achieving the money or success we know we’re capable of. Or we feel trapped in a career that pays the bills but leaves us feeling drained and uninspired – and yet don’t know what our real calling is or whether transitioning into something new is anything more than a fantasy.
If it’s not our careers that are stuck, then it’s our love lives. Whilst others appear to meet their soul-mates, we seem doomed to singledom or to unsatisfying relationships that don’t work out. Or perhaps the pressing issue isn’t work or love but health; we’re struggling with our weight, our digestion, our insomnia, our skin or some other condition that we just can’t seem to shift.
When an area of our lives seems stagnant and resistant to change, then what?
1) Make friends with the worst-case-scenario
Playing out the worst-case-scenario in our mind helps us psychologically face what we’re scared of – it has nothing to do with being pessimistic and doing so won’t make that scenario more likely to happen. If we can’t make friends with that possibility – and see that perhaps even that outcome would be okay – we live in fear of it happening, even if it never does. True peace and freedom don’t come because we find a guarantee that “bad things” won’t occur, but rather because we realize that as soon as we relax into what the mind has labeled “bad”, we discover a blessing there that could never have been predicted.
2) Accessing inner intuition
As long as we’re frantically trying to change things or find answers, the tightly-wound fear that is driving us on the inside usually thwarts any progress. When we radiate an energy of contracted anxiety, nothing flows – people don’t gravitate to help us and no amount of acupuncture or reiki does the trick. Once our minds stop producing fear – because we’ve made friends with what we’re scared of – the body starts to relax. We begin to see synchronicities and get intuitive hunches. The next step suddenly becomes clear, whether it’s starting relationship counselling or going to that conference we heard about. We start to “know” with something far deeper that just our intellects.
3) When the mind gets restless focus on “incompletes” *
The mind has a tendency to panic when it can’t see how it will get to where it thinks it needs to go in order to be happy. One of the most effective ways of stopping this unproductive spiral is to focus wholeheartedly on an incomplete task – whether it’s the dishes, the laundry or that phone-call you’ve been putting off. Incompletes can weigh us down – it’s as if all the “shoulds” or guilt around not having dealt with them energetically deplete our energy. If we can focus fully on such a task, we immediately become present in the moment and stop obsessing about the future. Inadvertently we also put our affairs in order which means that when things start moving again – and they will – we’re building on a solid foundation.
* “Incompletes” is a term I first heard used in a workshop given by Ariel and Shya Kane, authors of “How to Create a Magical Relationship” and “Why working on Yourself Doesn’t Work”. To find out more about their appoach, visit their website at www.transformationmadeeasy.com