“Nature turns manure into flowers, compost into gardens, our stuff into our highest potential.” ~ Bev Pugh and a fortune cookie

After having written What do I stand For in January, I was energized with inspiration. I had brought more clarity into my life about what I really stand for. For me it is courage, compassion, highest potential, service, and gratitude. There are times when the tools in my beautiful tool kit seem not to be that effective. When this happens, there are three avenues with which I guide myself to get back on track and to reconnect with myself. We all go through waves of resistance. We can be so locked into habit. It is part of being human! It is one thing to create a vision that feels so right and it is another to live it. My philosophy with myself is that resistance can visit but it doesn’t have to stay. Here is what I do.

Firstly, I watch Bob Newhart. It’s a 2 ½ minute clip and here is the link:

https://youtu.be/LhQGzeiYS_Q

I encourage you to take a breath and click the link to watch a beautiful demonstration of how we move into tough love with ourselves. As parents, we do this with our kids. In psychology, we talk about “thought stopping”. It is a way of being firm with ourselves. We direct ourselves by imagining a huge red stop sign in our minds eye when habitual thoughts start talking and overtaking our mind. This gives us a chance to take a deep breath and have a moment of choice. Once we have clarity around what we stand for, we then have the choice of holding that direction. Don’t forget that all of us are human and our humanness kicks in at times. Resistance occurs when we want to stay in our comfort zones. We think we are safe there. The truth is that our comfort zone provides us with an artificial feeling of safety.

Secondly, another theme is remembering what is important for me. I then bring that focus into the moment. It is so easy to forget as we get busy. So, this is what I do so I stay in charge. I create a secret symbol that is just for me, which represents what I stand for. It represents the words and the spirit and essence. Right now, it is the Sun. I have a beautiful little picture of the sun and I put it on a little card and I can carry it everywhere. It symbolizes everything, so when I look at it, I just remember. It is a lot easier than talking to myself and I find it more powerful. I also imagine a little sun in the corner of my vision as I interact with the world, so I have my secret way of remembering. It is actually very powerful. After a while, I change the symbol because it doesn’t carry the same power of inspiration anymore. It becomes a bit old, so I then will create another symbol. Usually, this new symbol appears when I am doing something such as when I am dog walking in the mountains. I say to myself “Oh, there it is! My new symbol!”

Thirdly, I find the single biggest obstacle for self-growth is judgment. We all can be hard on ourselves for forgetting and slipping. It is one thing to be annoyed with ourselves and another to judge ourselves as being less than because we make mistakes. Compassion is the fuel we want to be using, self-compassion. For me, it is a combination of self-compassion and firmness. It’s that kind of ‘tough love’ parent approach that we can use for ourselves.

Resistance is an opportunity. An opportunity to weed our mental gardens!

Be aware of your resistance rather than collapsing into it.

Have a special month!