Very happy to see you back here, dear Reader 🙂
Wealth and fame, ever-increasing comfort, space and ‘freedom’ to come and go as we please … none are shields against insecurities, stress and depression.
Personal freedom and peace can only come from within.
We know it’s true.
For those who have made it to a recognised pinnacle of fame, too often there comes a time when the passion and motivation wane, but the cost of stepping off the stage is considered too enormous.
That cost to the ego is as enormous as the pressure to keep pleasing the fans who, incrementally, have helped us up to that pedestal.
And keep expecting constant value for their ‘love’.
Yet, how many millions of us would ‘die’ to do a ‘body swap’ with our chosen celebrity onscreen celebrity – if only for one year?
We forget that ‘in real life’, each and every person who has ever lived has had to make tough choices and sacrifice, only to struggle with the emotions that have boomeranged back at them.
Heads up: ironically, the people who seem totally empowered, the ones we envy, do not tend to be the happiest, by far.
We know that’s true, too.
Reality check: it’s never comfortable standing for long on a pedestal, but those on it have had to endure their vulnerability for the same reason we have had to endure ours – and it’s ongoing.
Reality check: no matter how we might posture, there is no degree of fame and wealth that shields us from the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves – and about others, too.
Just like us.
Too soon, the euphoria of having reached their first goal wanes.
Then, they’re off to show their grit in/through the next round and the one after and many after to experience that cathartic ecstasy once again.
Until even that gets boring.
And that is what life is about.
Stretching and contracting.
Pushing and yielding.
Grasping and releasing.
The real game-changer is how well we navigate each one of these moments.
Those we admire have chosen to put themselves through all of that, just as we did at our own level, even though their first breakthrough brought them to a ‘place of opportunities’, they say had been beyond their wildest dreams.
Just like us, they wanted and still want more – more – more of what they felt at the best of their moments.
They want all that is within the sphere of potentiality.
When managed healthily by them and by us, it yields positive empowerment.
When done from fear of missing out, of being pushed aside or ridiculed, it brings about mental health issues.
Celebrities, billionaires, high achievers, top chefs, and top athletes like, Naomi Osaka, currently the highest-paid woman athlete on the planet, even the most iconic people we might hear about in the present or remember from the past, absolutely all of them have endured many ‘dark nights of the soul’, as the expression has it.
As an aside and within the context of this mind-meander, any one’s soul is energy of the highest frequency. It cannot ever have a ‘dark night’ – not anymore that it can be ‘lost’ or ‘nasty’ or ‘impure’ – or ‘cleansed’.
These descriptors are purely human labels.
As Yudit CS, my mentor of 10 years, used to remind me, just as the integrity of a diamond buried in the mud will never be compromised, so it is with the nature of the soul.
Heads up: we forget that the human body was never meant to become a transactional tool.
It was never intended to accept toxicity in our thinking any more than in our relationships.
It was not engineered as a means to achieve an end. At least, not if the ‘end’ is to be contentment.
Reality check #1: a creative expression of the self comes neither out of a box or a tube. It will not come, either, out of anything we consider ‘valuable’.
Reality check #2: cultural patterns inherited from long gone ancestors are even more durable than disposable diapers, plastic toothbrushes and bottles that take 500 years to break down.
Our children, are still taught, as we were, that developing a visible, confident self – emanating wealth and sexual appeal as per the expectations of one’s circle of influence – are objectives worth aiming for.
Sometimes at all cost.
Reality check #3: the patterns we have continued to absorb as adults can be as damaging to us – and to those, near and far, with whom we come in contact – as discarded 6-pack plastic rings with which marine wildlife gets entangled.
Reality check #4: the ability to lift our selves up before attempting to lift others and ‘changing the world’ demands a personalised vision of something even less tangible than fame.
It demands an ‘inside job’ – one that we, alone, can perform from the inside-out – for our greater good and for that of others, near and far.
Known or unknown to us.
Visible or invisible to us.
If our aim is to, one day, be so ‘lucky’ as to ‘feel like our selves’, we must begin by finding our emotional freedom.
Then, we can transmute what’s no longer serving us by evaluating ‘values’ that are worth cultivating vs ‘valuables’ that seem worth accumulating.
Reality check: whether we are an anonymous speck in the midst of billions of other specks or whether the ‘world’ knows our name, when we live in stress mode, our default operating mechanism is fear.
Fear of disappointing.
Fear of criticism.
Fear of losing it.
Fear of running out of … genius.
Fear of being demoted and ‘unbranded’.
Fear of simply meeting our true self, the version of us who is much authentically greater than we are.
Wise ones tell us that are not our mind – we are not our body.
They tell us that we are conscious energy compressed in our body.
So, we stop judging ourselves.
We actively accept whatever has happened in the past.
We understand that it has created a program of contraction and
suppression, also disconnection.
We understand that and we let go.
We let go because these fears keep us, one and all, from tapping into the deepest level of our energy – our Soul-full energy.
That’s our custom-made, karmically engineered GPS.
It’s always updated and optimised to turn us away from any nerve-wracking frazzle and return us to our core, to our inner self – to Soul’s whispered words of wisdom.
Heads up: if one is seriously interested in achieving a sustained degree of contentment, it might be best to stay away from a ‘burning desire’ for fame and more money than what is needed to lead a reasonably safe and comfortable life.
Every choice we make, good or bad, tiny or jarring, whirs like the yin yang concept of dualism.
Where one ends, the other begins.
There’s a bit of the other in each one.
Losing all meaning if separated, the contrary forces are intended to complement each other.
Invigorating and rejuvenating.
Release and receive.
Active and calm.
These opposites spinning in dynamic balance bring us back to centre.
So, we move our selves from insecure thoughts to confidence, from sadness to compassion for our selves.
And from anger to courage.
Heads up: observed with neutral awareness, we are “Not This, Not That” – at least, not totally ‘This’ or ‘That’.
Not yet, but it’s ‘work in progress.’
Bottom line: we need the vibrating energy of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ choices we make.
We need the tedious effects of our choices as much as we need the challenging and the demanding ones.
We need the calm and the safe moments just as much as we need the joyful and straining ones.
We know that.
We know it’s true.
And so, dear Reader, we choose to breathe consciously.
We imagine breathing in from our 2nd chakra, in our lower dantian, the seat of our energy.
We breathe to the count of 4.
We hold our breath for a couple of seconds
We make our exhale a bit longer than our inhale.
Once we are willing to breathe consciously a few minutes every day – preferably even before we get out of bed, we are better able to curate the thoughts that would, otherwise be triggered by our feelings.
Then, we are better able to infuse our thoughts with the heart-based coherence that is aligned with our best intentions – and we energise them.
Each time we take time to breathe consciously, we enable our mind to create the ‘soil’ in which our optimised thoughts can grow – and thrive, as we will.
Right!
No pressure!
Our warrior self has got this! 😉
She has our back.
Totally!😊
Bottom line: as Napoleon Hill urged, ‘Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.’
So, keep reading, dear Reader,
Keep pondering & keep sharing.
