Picture Credit – Jeannie Selda
“It is not that you need to get rid of the fear in order to fly. It is that you need to start flying to witness the fear becoming irrelevant, as your heart displaces fear with the truth of who you are.”
– Jennifer Hough
Oh, I can still get mad at circumstances or people in my life and give them all my power. Ugh.
Waiting for a spouse to change. Waiting for my back deck to get sanded and painted. Waiting for my body to finally cooperate.
Talk about giving my own power away. Oh, and you’ll love this!
If I’m really letting it rip, I’ll also realize I’m being a victim, and then be angry at myself for being a victim. Oh, that’s good isn’t it? Why not try being a victim of being a victim? Very inventive!
Happiness and fulfillment with the people and circumstances around you isn’t a process you get better at over months. It’s a choice you make at every moment. I got proof of that thirty-five thousand feet over the Atlantic.
I am writing this love note to you all while flying to Scotland, and the WiFi was not cooperating. And when I am in Scotland, I want to fully be there, not writing emails.
And I heard the little voice. “I am at the mercy of a machine.”
I spiraled for a minute, but then, I chose. I closed my eyes and just breathed. Within a minute, a literal minute, the man in the row behind me tapped my shoulder and told me exactly what I needed to do. Not because I asked. Because I redirected the energy instead of feeding the complaint.
Then, there was the issue of my seat. I’m a tall woman wedged into a middle seat, which is usually a small nightmare. But I’ve trained myself well enough by now to expect magic when that happens. I (and you, too!) are never given a circumstance without it happening for you. So instead of grumbling, I got curious: how is this happening for me? That question is what got me talking to the woman next to me. Turns out, she’s Russian, into physics, has already read UNSTUCK, and is now coming on next year’s Scotland trip! I only struck up that conversation because I was vigilant for goodness.
We’ve been taught that changing our circumstances, or the people in them, takes time, patience, and a whole “process.” But every one of those moments on that plane says otherwise. It’s a choice, available right now, in this exact breath. Not later, once you’ve healed enough, or vented. Now. Redirect the energy, and the world redirects with you, sometimes literally, in the next sixty seconds.
So today, wherever you find yourself… in the middle seat, staring at a dead WiFi signal, or in one of those moments that isn’t going quite the way you planned, choose differently.
Breathe. Redirect. Get curious about the magic instead of feeding the complaint.
You might be surprised how quickly the world starts answering back.
Okay, a caveat. You cannot change other people. But you can create the environment for powerful conversations to happen, you can get vulnerable, and you can let love win.
That’s when the magic happens between people. You are never a victim.
I mean does anyone or anything deserve that much power? Come on.